Cotidianos de uma reparação: os caminhos da coleção Nosso Sagrado no Museu da República

Abstract

This dissertation begins within the context of the criminalization of Afro-Brazilian religions during the early years of the Brazilian Republic, a period in which the seizure of sacred objects was framed as material evidence of crimes, giving rise to the collection titled Museu de Magia Negra (“Museum of Black Magic”). This collection remained under the custody of the Civil Police of the State of Rio de Janeiro for more than eighty years, constituting nearly a century-long struggle by the Afro-Brazilian religious community for the restitution of their sacred belongings. In 2020, these objects were transferred to the Museu da República as a gesture of reparation—an act that broadened public debate on the processes that define reparative practices. One of the key milestones in this trajectory was the renaming of the collection from Museu de Magia Negra (“Museum of Black Magic”) to Nosso Sagrado (“Our Sacred”). By tracing the paths of this collection through ethnographic research, documentary analysis, and close observation of the Shared Management Group of the Collection, this study examines its celebratory and ceremonial character, highlighting everyday practices as legitimating forces of the reparative process—understood here as a sustained and temporally extended exercise. The research focuses on the daily practices of documentation, cataloguing, conservation, and dissemination of the artifacts, analyzing their meanings within the fields of museology and anthropology.The work proposes to understand reparation not as a single juridical or symbolic act, but as an ongoing, collective, and procedural exercise, grounded in the active participation of religious leaders and the narrative production of these communities within the museum space. Throughout this process, the dissertation articulates reflections on memory, embodiment, and orality, engaging with the contributions of Beatriz Nascimento, Leda Maria Martins, Ariella Azoulay, Conceição Evaristo, Elizabeth Jelin, Janine Barbot, Nicolas Dodier, Denise Ferreira da Silva, and Saidiya Hartman. It argues that shared management and the production of escrevivências (“living writings”) within the Museu da República constitute a horizon of resistance against religious racism and epistemicide, shaping a legitimate path toward justice.