THE HISTORY, MEMORY AND REPRESENTATIONS

OF THE PAST IN THE WORK OF GUSTAVO BARROSO

Abstract

The objective is to investigate the production of Gustavo Barroso (1888-1959), an intellectual dedicated to the study of Brazilian military history, in the creation of a national memory project, especially through the writing of biographies, published between the 1920s and 1940. It is considered that, by narrating the historical trajectory of the combatants, Barroso aimed to transform readers into spectators or witnesses, offering them an experience of the past. The creation of this effect of truth, through discourse, would be the main feature of the biographical narrative prepared by Barroso, committed to transmitting a living and emotional experience of the past. And yet, by exchanging historical narrative and museographic narrative, Barroso promoted a pedagogy of history, committed to the political and symbolic construction of the nation, in order to meet the needs of the present. By mobilizing nationalism and militarism, in their different ways of narrating the past, Barroso established tradition as a basic category for communication between generations. It actually promoted an order of time, because, as it testified to the monumentality of the past, it ended up ensuring a promise of the future for the nation.