Memórias e narrativas (auto) biográficas

Abstract

The enthusiasm of historians for research in the field of biographical and autobiographical research has been gaining space in recent publications in Brazil and in the world. A brief glance at publishers' catalogues and at bookshop shelves will shown that the country is experiencing a great increase in publications of a biographical and autobiographical nature-by way of example we can cite O retorno de Martin Guerre by Natalie Z. Davis (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1987) and D. Pedro II by José Murilo de Carvalho (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007). This enthusiasm of researchers in the social sciences is due to the fact that contact with primary sources, documents, papers, letters, notes and photographs is capable of revealing aspects that were unknown or even invisible until then in the social world experienced by 'common' men and women and by those of greater importance in history. This sensation is strengthened when the material escapes from the institutional rigors of documentary production, serial characteristics and bureaucratic formats, and has a private origin or a personal nature, conferring the impression of contact with very intimate aspects of the history of the people involved. Access to these sources has the strength of simulating transport in time, the immersion experience as directly lived, without mediations. 1 In parallel to this movement, it is important to highlight that readers are increasingly interested in a certain genre of writing-writing about oneself-which includes diaries, letters, biographies and autobiographies, independent of whether they are memories or interviews about life trajectories, for example. As Giovanni Levi has highlighted, our archivistic fascination with descriptions that are impossible to corroborate due to the lack of documentary