A centralidade da questão racial na questão social brasileira: dos documentos públicos à produção literária negra da Primeira República

Abstract

This thesis is composed of an object that forms an intrinsic theoretical unity within the Brazilian social formation: the “racial question” and the “social question.” The objective of the study was to understand the intertwining of these two categories in Brazil. Initially, a bibliographic study was conducted on the power relations constituted in and for the sociability of capital, responsible for the coalitions in the social formations of Latin America and functional to imperialism and neocolonialism. This basis for discussion was fundamental to understanding the determinations experienced by Black workers, especially by highlighting the universally constructed societal project built by racism in its various strategies and forms of operation within the capitalist system. After this investigation, using Aesthetic Realism as a methodological resource, two stages were carried out: the first concerns research in the National Archives of Brazil, in search of documents from institutions of the First Republic created to address the poverty demands generated by the colonial and post-colonial context, aiming to identify the ethno-racial profile of the workers; The second part corresponds to the use of art in two phases: initially, the search for Black authors who experienced Brazil before and after the abolition of enslaved labor, and then the analysis of literary texts written by these intellectuals. The investigative path and the presentation of the results were defined throughout the documentary research, which demonstrated that the racial profile of the country and the reality of Black people, popularly marked and justified by structural issues, required a qualitative approach. This perspective revealed, in addition to the already known methods, the denunciations, demands, and resistance expressed in the production of knowledge specific to that time: strategically, through literary art. The study concluded that it is only possible to recognize the centrality of the "racial question" in the so-called "social question" in Brazil if the daily lives of workers are observed – whether through art or through official data that systematize the country's memory.