Entre o “direito à memória” e o direito à história: Política e sujeitos sociais em uma proposta historiográfica

Abstract

This study sought to analyze the development of a historiographical practice inspired by the first administration of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers' Party) in the city of São Paulo, between 1989 and 1992. Among others, the idea of the “right to memory” was developed there, seen as a means of producing citizenship for the peripheral population, for social movements, and for a curricular practice set in municipal schools. In its view, the right to memory supported the development of a research and academic cooperation project sent to the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes) in 2000. This gave rise to the research “Cultura, Trabalho e Cidade: Muitas Memórias, Outras Histórias”, analyzed here. Despite having its origins in political praxis, the project took place in academic environments, between 2001 and 2004, based on particular appropriations of categories, concepts, and processes originated in the concreteness of the administrative experience. This analysis contrasted texts and articles that deal with the initial political ambiance with the syntheses later carried out by the group that developed the proposal. An attempt was made to approach the results of this from the historical logic, that is, by elaborating successive hypotheses opposed to the sources and theoretical propositions conceived by the group. From this review, dialogues with Marxist authors, such as E. P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, were followed, in opposition to economicist orthodoxy and Leninism. In addition, there were discussions about culture and language, in which it was possible, on the one hand, to assess approximations with historical heritage policies. On the other hand, by verifying the use of culture, as a social totality, and language, as the fabric of life, the foundations of the historiographical analyses resulting from the project sent to Capes were found. Still, in the field of disclosures, perceptions about the individual (pluralized) and his relationship with the collective were found, especially from methodological discussions on oral history, which allowed reflections on the subject of knowledge and object of study. This thesis concluded an analytical displacement between the initiatory political moment and the historiographic realization in the academic environment. This was characterized by the overlapping of the idea of the right to history with the right to memory, the result of a change in the institutional context, transformations in the guidelines on cultural policies, the overcoming of language to the notion of citizenship, and the proposition of amalgamated writing, filled with the conceptions of all the participants linked to the surveys on screen. At the same time, it was noticed that the right to history tended to validate the historiographic proposal in a relational way to the validation of patrimonial policies for the right to memory.