BEEWEEN CONTINUITIES AND RUPTURES: A MEMORY OF THE POST-ABOLITION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE REPUBLIC OF THE DEGENERATES AT THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY
Meanings of May 13th, citizenship, black intellectuals, abolition, memory.
In Maranhão, abolition arrived by telegram, on a night filled with turmoil, agitation and political aspirations, heralded by the bright news of the redemption of the captives. No one had slept on the previous night, neither slaves nor masters, as fear and terror loomed over the possibility of the law not being signed and the re-enslavement of many who were already freed.
The meanings of the memory of May 13th and the struggles for civil and political rights in the agrarian north, through literature by black writers, appropriate and give a new tone to historical fiction, reinterpreting the official history and the Black experience in forced diaspora. In this rhythm, new narratives about the captivity of racialized slavery illuminate the recomposition of gaps and repositioning of central paradigms of Brazilian constitutionalism.
If the abolition of slavery is a night that never ended, the dawn of freedom marks the black experiences recorded by black intellectuals by the end of the 19th century. While there were continuities, there were also significant ruptures in the circularity of time within this regime of historicity.