Modernity and racism in the construction of the Brazilian nation

approaches between Denise Ferreira da Silva and Lima Barreto

Abstract

This text is based on the perspective presented by Denise Ferreira da Silva in "towards a global idea of race". Throughout the book, the author weaves together the ways in which the two main onto-epistemological descriptors of modernity, universality and historicity, authorize the establishment of a Brazilian national text which, despite its seemingly democratic appearance, throws black lives into extermination or engulfment. Miscegenation is valued because it feeds only on fragments of "primitive" cultures to be synthesized by a future purified nation. Purification made possible, according to Freyre, by a peculiarity of the Portuguese man's sexual desire. This text bets that this diagnosis allows us to revisit and relocate some of the questions Lima Barreto elaborated throughout his career, observed since his productive youthful impetus that promised to write "the History of black slavery in Brazil and its influence on our nationality".