{"id":156492,"date":"2014-08-24T16:17:33","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T19:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=156492"},"modified":"2017-04-10T15:25:36","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T18:25:36","slug":"colonization-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/colonization-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Against the colonization of thought"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jo\u00e3o

PEDRO MARTINELLI<\/span>Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro perched on the root of a tree at the ruins of Nosso Senhor de Vera Cruz Church in Itaparica, 1989. At the time, he was working on The Lizard\u2019s Smile<\/em>PEDRO MARTINELLI<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

When he was inducted into the Brazilian Academy of Letters (ABL) in 1992, author Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro, a native of the state of Bahia, evoked the memory of Carlos Castello Branco, whose chair he would occupy: \u201cI am not a man of letters in the strict sense of the term. I\u2019m just a novelist, a storyteller.\u201d For scholars of his works, he was more than that: he was a philosopher of his people\u2019s identity. Specialist in the Brazilian short short story known as the cr\u00f4nica<\/i>, journalist, screenwriter, and intellectual, Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro, who passed away in July 2014 in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 73, was above all the narrator of a <\/i>history of Brazil.<\/p>\n

Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro graduated from law school and received master\u2019s degrees in business administration and political science. He became a professor at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) but left academic life behind. Researchers who study his work affirm that he earned prominence not only as a writer but as an intellectual and political scientist. In this regard, Viva o povo brasileiro <\/i>(tr. An Invincible Memory<\/i>, 1989) played a central role. Rita Olivieri-Godet, full professor of Brazilian literature at Rennes 2 University, in France, believes that the pages of An Invincible Memory <\/i>portray the island of Itaparica, in Bahia, as a microcosm of the country. \u201cThe book is one of the foundational works of Brazilian social thought on Brazil. Ubaldo belongs to the ranks of great interpreters of our nation,\u201d she says. According to Olivieri-Godet, by painting a broad panorama of the historical processes that shaped Brazilian society and its shifts, the novel revisits various interpretative views produced by intellectuals and writers over the centuries. \u201cAnd it reserves a special place for expressions of Afro-Brazilian culture, allowing the book to investigate the origins of the social dramas experienced by Brazil\u2019s mestizo, black, and poor populations and to explore our historical knowledge of their struggles,\u201d observes Olivieri-Godet, author of Constru\u00e7\u00f5es identit\u00e1rias na obra de Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro <\/i>(Identity construction in the work of Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro) (Hucitec\/EdUEFS\/Academia Brasileira de Letras, 2009).<\/p>\n

First released nearly 30 years ago, in October 1984, An Invincible Memory<\/i> is considered Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro\u2019s masterpiece precisely because it delves into Brazilian contradictions between the real and the imaginary, that is, between the historical process of colonization and narrative. According to Helena Bonito Couto Pereira, professor at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in S\u00e3o Paulo, this narrative belongs to the realm of historiographic metafiction, a brand of fiction that questions the very possibility of coming to understand history by engaging in an intentionally subversive reinterpretation of the past. In a plot that stretches from the 17th to the 20th centuries, the author employs pinches of literary irony, ingredients from the world of fantastic realism, and doses of subversion of the official discourse to examine the lives of characters representative of the three ethnicities that settled Brazil: white, Indian, and black. \u201cAt one extreme we find characters reminiscent of Macuna\u00edma in their irrepressible egotism and moral disengagement. At the other, there are characters who are authentically dedicated to political struggle, especially to the emancipation of the slaves, but even more than that, to the establishment of a more just society,\u201d says Pereira, who is also dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Mackenzie. \u201cHis work thus inspires reflection on Brazilian socioeconomic inequality and its corollaries, like violence, poverty, and cruelty, products of the process of colonization and of the country\u2019s complex ethnic makeup.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ubaldo contributed to anthropological, historical, and sociological thought on the different identities existing in Brazil from colonial days to the present, along much the same lines as, but in more literary terms than, S\u00e9rgio Buarque de Holanda (Ra\u00edzes do Brasil<\/i>, 1936; tr. Roots of Brazil<\/i>, 2012) and Darcy Ribeiro (O povo brasileiro<\/i>, 1995; tr. The Brazilian People<\/i>, 2000), among others. Of the various identities constructed in the book, the reader is struck by the one that is mestizo, plural, and transcultural. There is, according to Olivieri-Godet, the \u201clegitimizing\u201d identity, corresponding to the viewpoint of the elites and the institutions that ruled for four centuries; on the other hand, there is the identity of \u201cresistance,\u201d which is the stance taken by the social actors who are devalued by the dominant logic. For scholars of Ubaldo, the author\u2019s main legacy is something intrinsic to his work: a rebellion against any and all forms of \u201ccolonization of thought,\u201d from the most blatant and brutal to the most subtle.<\/p>\n

Specialists say that Ubaldo assumed the role of an intellectual writer \u2013 much like Palestinian thinker Edward Said \u2013 wielding a sharp critical pen to portray individual angst and social ills from the perspective of universal values. \u201cJo\u00e3o Ubaldo\u2019s literary mission was bound up with the [Brazilian] people. As an energetic intellectual representative, he was wholly devoted to engaged, political literary activity, fighting all forms of power through skillful intellectual exercise, because he knew how to use words and when to intervene through them; his novels were conceived as a way of bearing witness to social ills and of endowing readers with awareness of this once-colonized country\u2019s state of underdevelopment,\u201d says linguist Angela Antunes Concei\u00e7\u00e3o, author of the doctoral dissertation \u201cThe paths and trails of cultural communitarianism in Jos\u00e9 Luandino VieiraNosso musseque<\/i> [Our Musseque]) and Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro <\/i>(An Invincible Memory<\/i>): an identity in (trans)formation\u201d (in Port.), defended in 2011 at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Literature, and Human Sciences (FFLCH-USP).<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout losing sight of its concern with society, Ubaldo\u2019s novels also breathe life into the \u2018little soul\u2019 of the Brazilian people \u2013 of the oppressed, the marginalized and, at the same time, of the oppressor, the elite, the bourgeois. Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro does a masterful job of capturing Brazil\u2019s pluralized soul,\u201d observes Concei\u00e7\u00e3o. Valiant Brazilian souls, as depicted on the novel\u2019s final pages: \u201cThis is not known, nothing is known, all is chosen. All is chosen, as know the little souls now shivering in the infinite cosmic cold, which makes them sway like the kites flown by the children they miss. Little Brazilian souls, so tiny and guileless they caused pity, but resolved to go back to fight\u201d (An Invincible Memory<\/i>, New York: Harper & Row, 1989, p. 504).<\/p>\n

From Itaparica to the World
\n<\/strong>Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro\u2019s books were not limited to the borders of Brazil. Titles likeSetembro n\u00e3o tem sentido <\/i>(1968; September makes no sense); Sargento Get\u00falio <\/i>(1971; tr.Sergeant Get\u00falio<\/i>, 1997); O sorriso do lagarto <\/i>(1989; tr. The Lizard\u2019s Smile<\/i>, 1994); A casa dos budas ditosos <\/i>(1999; tr. House of the fortunate Buddhas<\/i>, 2011); and O albatroz azul <\/i>(2009; Blue albatross) have been translated into 12 languages. Available in English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, his writings echo in more remote languages as well, like Slovenian, Finnish, Hebrew, Norwegian, and Swedish. The laurels accumulated during his career include two Jabutis (Brazil\u2019s top literary prize), for Sargento Get\u00falio <\/i>in 1972 and for Viva o povo brasileiro <\/i>in 1984, and a Cam\u00f5es (2008), roughly equivalent to a Nobel in the Lusophone world. Internationally, he received Germany\u2019s Die Blaue Brillenschlange (1995) as well as the Anna Seghers prize (1994), the latter awarded by the Berlin Academy of Arts at the Frankfurt Book Fair.<\/p>\n

If this Bahian intellectual celebrated Brazilian identity in his writings, his cosmopolitanism should not be forgotten. Together with Jorge Amado, he is one of Brazil\u2019s best-known authors abroad. This is the estimation of Olivieri-Godet, who is a member of the University Institute of France and has lived outside Brazil for 20 years. \u201cHis work is studied in graduate courses in France. His actual presence here in France in recent years, when he took part in roundtables and lectures, also helped interest the public in his work,\u201d says the author, who will release Viva o povo brasileiro: a fic\u00e7\u00e3o de uma na\u00e7\u00e3o plural <\/i>(An invincible memory: the fiction of a plural nation) (Editora \u00c9 Realiza\u00e7\u00f5es) in November 2014.<\/p>\n

Ubaldo translated two of his books into English himself: Sergeant Get\u00falio <\/i>and An Invincible Memory<\/i>. This was a Herculean task, considering the literary sophistication and historical lines of both. The unprecedented nature of this achievement earned the author additional prestige among his peers. His endeavor was subsequently analyzed by Maria Alice Gon\u00e7alves Antunes, director of the Institute of Letters at Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ) and author of a study later released in book form under the title O respeito pelo original: Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro e a autotradu\u00e7\u00e3o <\/i>(Respecting the original: Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro and self-translation) (Annablume, 2009). One of the points made by Antunes is that the translated text is a balancing act between the foreign reader and Brazilian culture \u2013 and the author succeeded in reaching the foreign reader without erasing the original culture from his text. \u201cThere are always changes when you translate, but I don\u2019t like to talk about the losses that may occur in a translation. This kind of attitude comes from viewing translation as a second-class activity. How many Brazilian works and authors \u2013 from both literature and scientific theory \u2013 would be locked inside a geographic and cultural space were it not for translation?\u201d the linguist argues.<\/p>\n

Scholars are unanimous in affirming that Ubaldo\u2019s stories allow the reader to identify with essentially complex, universal human questions. If some of the writer\u2019s lines center on Latin America\u2019s \u201cexotic\u201d character, what lies between the lines is simply human drama. Dancing between Brazilian and cosmopolitan, regional and universal, singular and plural \u2013 there resides the legacy of the work of Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jo\u00e3o Ubaldo Ribeiro contributed to reflections on Brazilian identities","protected":false},"author":515,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[165],"tags":[201,226,245],"coauthors":[1308],"class_list":["post-156492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanities","tag-anthropology","tag-education","tag-literature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/515"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156492"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=156492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}