Roots of Brazil as “palimpsest”: a re-reading of the historical essay of Brazilian culture, by hypothesis

Abstract

This text proposes an interpretation of Roots of Brazil (Sérgio Buarque de Holanda) as a “palimpsest of inscriptions”, that is how our reading of this historical essay of Brazilian culture considers the modifications in its revised version (from 1936 to 1948). In this regarding, we understand the changes made by the author in the text with the purpose to reconfigure the interaction of writing (whose subject is the Brazilian social transformation process) with its political context of production. The book's polynucleated axis is shifted from an early organicist moment in terms of intellectual production (in the 1930s) to a more liberal reorientation from times of democratic openness (post-1945).