Historian is a reference in research on slavery
The Brazilian historiographical tradition of the 20th century on slavery considered that the slave was incapable of developing, together with his fellow men, a personal identity and an autonomous culture full of vitality. According to this view, the slave regime would exhaust the existence of individuals subjected to it, transforming them into victims of external forces and, therefore, incapable of acting as subjects.
From the 1980s onwards, this approach began to change, as historians incorporated methodologies capable of understanding the culture and daily lives of slaves. From this perspective, culture is treated as a field of conflict, rather than a field in which dominant forces suppress the efforts of a subordinate class. In this revolution, the name of historian Robert Slenes, linked to the History Department of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp, emerges as a reference for the historiography on slavery and African and Afro-Brazilian culture.
This is the story told in the documentary Travel Malungos, produced by Unicamp’s Communication Secretariat (SEC). Directed by journalist Patricia Lauretti, with editing by Guilherme Rodrigues, a student at the Laboratory of Advanced Journalism Studies (Labjor), the documentary revisits the trajectory and thoughts of Bob Slenes – as he prefers to be called –, from his own perspective and the view of students and co-workers.
“The idea for the documentary came from an interview with Robert Slenes in the context of the debate on the implementation of ethnic-racial quotas at Unicamp, based on the book named after him”, explains Patrícia, referring to the book Slavery and Afro-Brazilian Culture – Themes and problems surrounding the work of Robert Slenes, organized by four of the historian’s students.
In addition to the interview with Slenes, carried out by journalist Álvaro Kassab, editor of Journal of Unicamp, testimonies were collected from two descendants of slaves, Nadir Oliveira Rocha Cury and Eglê Rocha Nascimento, about their memories linked to slavery in Campinas. These interviews were carried out by journalist Maria Alice da Cruz. The documentary also contains testimonies from historians Ricardo Pirola, Lucilene Reginaldo and Maisa Faleiros.
The title is a reference to the way Slenes refers to the students and students who accompanied him: malungo is a word of African origin, used by slaves to refer to the companions who traveled on the same boat as them. “Malungo is basically a gigantic canoe. It’s a metonymy,” he explains. This is how he sees those who followed the same paths as him in historical research. “They are not simply students or supervisees, they are travellers, from whom the teacher learns”.
Life of a historian
Born in the United States, Slenes graduated in Liberal Arts from Oberlin College (1965), received a master's degree in Spanish and Spanish American Literature from the University of Wisconsin and a PhD in History from Stanford University (1976), with a thesis on demography of slavery in Brazil between 1850 and 1888.
He came to Brazil at the end of the 1970s, with a post-doctoral scholarship to study the slave owners of Western São Paulo and ended up settling in the country.
He taught at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF) and, in 1984, became a professor in the Department of History at Unicamp, where he retired in 2013. He currently works as a collaborating professor at Unicamp and a researcher at the Center for Research in the Social History of Culture ( Cecult), at the same university.
In his post-doctorate, Slenes wanted to understand how the slave owners of Western São Paulo thought, in interface with thinkers such as Florestan Fernandes, who argued that these slave owners were aligned with capitalism and, therefore, had adopted a policy of dispersing slave families, in order to break the social bonds and resistance of the captives.
In the archives, the research changed focus to slave registration documents, which made it possible to identify, through numbers, their family ties. Cross-referencing this data with other sources of information, applying historical demography techniques and relying on the English historiography of Edward P. Thompson and North American authors who followed this lineage, Slenes pioneered the use of the method known as nominative linking of sources in area of the history of slavery in Brazil.
The method allows the reconstruction of the trajectory of people, families and groups – such as slaves –, making visible characteristics, cultural traits and differences that remained hidden in studies based, for example, exclusively on demographic data.
“The idea of the 'objectified' slave, culturally annihilated by the extreme violence of trafficking and slavery, prevailed at the time, with some exceptions”, analyzes Slenes. In this way, the historian continues, it was argued that the slave was “thrown into 'anomie' (an absolute lack of norms for behavior), without the possibility of developing social connections in the slave quarters (for example, forming families) and collectively contesting , slavery.”
Renewal of historiography
Author of works that became a reference for understanding slavery and the presence of Africa in Brazil – such as the book In the slave quarters, a flower – Hopes and memories in the formation of the slave family and the article “Malungu, ngoma” come!: Africa covered and discovered in Brazil –, Slenes promoted the emergence of several studies that looked at the slave as an active subject in the face of his reality.
“Slenes’ studies were fundamental to the history of the slave family in Brazil and to analyzes of the heritage of Central African culture in Brazilian society in the 19th century”, says historian Ricardo Pirola, professor in the Department of History at Unicamp.
For historian Lucilene Reginaldo, also from Unicamp, Slenes’ research contributed to “a historiography of slavery that is attentive to the experience of the enslaved” and that takes into account the African origins of the enslaved. “They are seen as starting points for new identities that creatively dialogue with political and social contexts, with the experience of slavery and freedom.”
“This perspective recognizes the strength and gives dignity to the story of the malungos survivors of the tumbeiros who, with reference to their African origins, formed families (that's why in the slave quarters there were flowers), jongos that mocked the masters and foremen, secret languages like that of Cafundó ”, she analyzes, referring to the quilombola community of Salto do Pirapora (SP), which communicates using a language of African origin, researched by Carlos Vogt, Peter Fry and also Bob Slenes.
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Book contains articles on the historian's research Luís Fernando M. Costa | Special for JU In 2014, to honor the historian Robert Slenes, who had retired, four of the historian's students – Gladys Sabina Ribeiro, Jonis Freire, Martha Campos Abreu and Sidney Chalhoub – organized a seminar in his honor at the Universidade Federal Fluminense. The seminar resulted in the book Slavery and Afro-Brazilian culture: themes and problems surrounding the work of Robert Slenes, published by Editora da Unicamp in 2016. The book's articles present and reflect on themes and problems present in the historian's work. Divided into five thematic axes, the book begins with articles that deal with “Africa in Brazil”. Based on the influence of historians such as Stanley J. Stein and Warren Dean, Slenes proposed an innovation by showing how Africans who came to Brazil constructed their own worldview which, in addition to a fusion of their culture of origin and the experience of captivity, were the basis of their actions, political or otherwise. In its second part, the work deals with Robert Slenes' main contribution to Brazilian historiography and demonstrates, with greater clarity, the revolution started by the historian. Named “Family”, this section brings up the long discussion about the slave family, the focus of much of his research. According to Ricardo Pirola, historian and advisor to Robert Slenes, at the time of his doctorate defense, there was a tendency in historiography to deny that there were families in Brazilian slave quarters. Slenes not only proved the opposite, but also highlighted the importance of these bonds for the formation of captive communities. In the third part, “Rebellion and trafficking”, the disorganization of slave communities and the violent reaction of these populations to different life circumstances are discussed. In a historical leap, the fourth part – “Abolition” – discusses, comparatively, the pre- and post-abolition period, in which Slenes' hypothesis of the “descending arc” is introduced, that is, the closure of opportunities for recently freed slaves from insert themselves into society; in return for the immigration of Portuguese people who occupied the jobs. Finally, the fifth part - “Visões de História” - differs from the others by bringing unique texts, such as the article by Tiago de Melo Gomes on the development of Brazilian historiography and the emergence of social history, and a long and beautiful interview with Robert Slenes himself about the trajectory of his career and the events that led a student of classic Spanish literature to a reference role within the studies of Brazilian slavery and African and Afro-Brazilian culture. Despite the innovation brought by the historian, historiography was already going through a process of changing approaches, which, in the 1980s, would be revolutionized by social history. Previously, in the 1960s and 1970s, historiography was dominated by “structural analysis”, which saw structures as the determining role in historical configuration. In other words, aspects such as “capitalism”, “slavery”, “conservative modernization” and “late capitalism” were the drivers of society. This removed the role of historical subjects from the subordinate classes. Brazilian historiography of this period, in particular, had as its explanatory key not the protagonism of the participants' actions, but an aspect external to them. In the case of the incomplete insertion of freed slaves into the job market, and the emergence of diverse cultural activities that escaped the capital-labor binomial – such as samba, capoeira, football –, it was believed that the cause was “allergy to work caused by years of captivity.” Likewise, the future insertion of this population into salaried work, and the reduction of these practices, would result from industrialization and the repressive policy of the Estado Novo. From the 1980s onwards, and with the revival of social movements, when the decisive role of the working class reappears beyond structural factors, a change of perspective is required. Robert Slenes works in this process by bringing to Brazil the thoughts of historian Edward P. Thompson, whose name becomes essential for social historians in Brazil. Along with him, Slenes uses the anthropologists Genovese and Gutman in order to promote a review of Brazilian slavery. From then on, the slaves, whose protagonism was denied, gained space for their voices to be heard. The aim is to understand how the experience of these subjects was shaped by their own perceptions and subjectivities. In this way, a new world opens up. |
SERVICE
Degree: Slavery and Afro-Brazilian culture
Organizers: Gladys Sabina Ribeiro, Sidney Chalhoub, Jonis Freire and Martha Campos Abreu.
pages: 456
Unicamp Publisher
Sidney Chalhoub talks about the work
