Unicamp - Press Room

From Pedro I to Quixote,
from IFCH to ISCTE in Lisbon

Paintings in the Cervantes room, where Emperor D. Pedro I was born and died

For those who have never seen it, it is a huge surprise to see the room where our emperor D. Pedro I was born and died. It is in the National Palace of Queluz, located less than half an hour from Lisbon. He is better known as the fourth Cervantes, named after the author of Don Quixote. Any Brazilian can be carried away by the staging of the imagination of the first emperor of Brazil from their own rooms.

The bedroom is impressive, firstly for its architecture. Apparently, it is a circular room, with a dome; however, observing the details, one can see the squareness of its shape. On the walls there are numerous paintings of scenes of Don Quixote, always mounted on a horse, as the figure of D. Pedro I was immortalized.

I would not be able to say, at the moment, whether the painter of the Brazilian Independence painting, Pedro Américo de Almeida, was inspired by the fourth Cervantes in the creation of his work, but his quotes are more than evident. There is a painting in the room that shows Quixote on horseback under the gaze of poor black men, which is very similar to Pedro Américo's painting of independence. Some Brazilian historians have even drawn comparisons between the adventures of Pedro I, known in Portugal as Pedro IV, and the adventures of Cervantes' Spanish literary hero.

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I remember that as a child I read books by historian Pedro Calmon, from the Brazilian Historical and Geographic Institute. My father greatly admired his works, and in them there were these allusions to the quixoticism of the first emperor of Brazil, who immortalized himself as “the knight king”. The allusions to the hero Don Quixote are countless and it can be said that the emperor's adventures are nothing like Cervantes' hero. D. Pedro, as a child, probably cherishing Quixote's adventures in the nights of the Sintra palace, prefigured in his fantasies the amazing exploits of that immortal character from Iberian literature.

For two years I have dedicated myself to studying the historical and literary plots that form national identity, in the composition of the images of the father and the son. This staging of D. Pedro's imagination in the Cervantes room adds to my other indications that many of the plots of national identity are marked by this type of tragicomic composition of Cervantes' great novel. Let me not be fooled: The Posthumous Memoirs of the Militia Sergeant, by Manuel António de Almeida, and Triste Fim by Policarpo Quaresma, by Lima Barreto.

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This week, on the 13th, 14th and 15th of November, we will have an excellent colloquium here near ISCTE (IXQTÊ). This is the International Colloquium “Social History of the Elites” (http://www.ics.ul.pt/agenda/ Segundocoloquio.htm), sponsored by the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon and which will be attended by researchers from Portugal, Spain and Brazil. This colloquium will have numerous debate sessions, divided into four thematic areas: 1. Metropolitan elites and overseas elites in the Iberian empires of the Old Regime (2th century); 3. Oligarchy and Chiefdom in Liberal States of the 4th century; 1970. Power and Resistance in Authoritarian Regimes of the 1980th Century; XNUMX. The Conduct of Transitions to Democracy in Southern Europe and Brazil (c. XNUMX-c. XNUMX).

Paintings in the Cervantes room, where Emperor D. Pedro I was born and died

I say close, not just for reasons of location, since the ISCTE and ICS buildings are neighbors, but because there are many affinities between these two social science institutes. In fact, I could say that they are very similar to the intellectual project that formed IFCH at Unicamp. Both institutes were formed during the years of Salazarism in Portugal and had the intellectual project of thinking about Portuguese society in a multidisciplinary dimension.

I remember very well my first years at IFCH and how similar this expectation was to ours. Also in Brazil, we lived under military rule in the 70s and social sciences were confused with the ideals of socialism. The same ostracism experienced by Brazilian social sciences in the 70s was also experienced by Portuguese social scientists. When I refer to social sciences, I am not limited to sociology, but to all social sciences, understood as such at that time, which also included anthropology, political science, history, economics and, finally, philosophy.

This is how the IFCH was structured when I arrived there in 1977. We were thinking, in fact, of a multidisciplinary social science. For this reason, the progressive fragmentation of the IFCH was so difficult and painful. Starting with departmentalization and ending with the separation of areas, as was the case with the creation of the Institute of Language Studies and the Institute of Economics. This was not the case with ISCTE and ICS. Born practically at the same time, they gradually differentiated themselves in their academic careers, without however losing the multidisciplinary identity of their original training.

This is so true that the current president of ISCTE, the friendly sociologist João Ferreira de Almeida, is a former ICS researcher. Likewise, countless ISCTE professors teach and research at ICS. The difference between them is the fact that ISCTE has undergraduate courses in all social sciences, including economics and an architecture course, in addition to master's and doctoral programs, while ICS resembles the classic École de Hautes model. Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris, with postgraduate programs only.

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When I refer to the affinities between these institutes and IFCH, I also reaffirm the commitments of the chair that I am currently occupying at ISCTE. The initiative of the former Brazilian ambassador to Portugal, José Gregori, could not have been happier and more successful, because it ended up associating two institutes that have enormous intellectual affinities, ISCTE and IFCH at Unicamp.

I don't know if our former ambassador to Portugal knew the history of these two institutions, but his choice could open new paths for multidisciplinary research in human sciences, which have been resumed at IFCH, especially after the creation of research centers and centers . Although we are at the beginning of our exchange, the knowledge that ISCTE professors have of IFCH researchers and professors is considerable, in the areas of sociology of work and trade unionism, in the history of Brazilian authoritarianism, in gender studies, in urban anthropology , among others.

ISCTE's intellectual vocation undoubtedly privileges studies of contemporary history in its multiple dimensions (social, political, cultural), but this does not mean that it leaves aside studies, especially of societies that were formed from modernity. That is, it is an institute that, due to its democratic and anti-Salazarist vocation, is seeking to overcome the images of a Portugal exclusively focused on its own mythical past.

Here, I have related myself to a renewed social science concerned with projecting Portugal into the future, both in its relations with Europe and with Portuguese-speaking countries, including Brazil and African nations. For this reason, there are many possibilities for academic exchange between Brazil and Portugal and, among them, I highlight the reciprocal interest in the history and current affairs of societies in Portuguese-speaking African countries.

In accordance with the expectation of growth in affirmative action in relation to the black issue in Brazil, IFCH and ISCTE could come together to create an interdisciplinary study project, taking advantage of the old ties that unite us with black and African-speaking Africa. Portuguese.

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Historian and professor at IFCH, Edgar Salvadori de Decca assumed the Brazil-Portugal chair in Social Sciences at the Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa (ISCTE), in Lisbon, in an agreement signed between that institution and Unicamp. At the invitation of Jornal da Unicamp, De Decca accepted the challenge of writing a weekly account of his stay in the Portuguese capital.