Um século de narrativas euclidianas e conselheiristas : interpretações sobre Antônio Conselheiro

Abstract

This study aimed to understand, organize, line out, interpret and classify the different discursive arrays that have been placed to interpret and explain the historical figure of Antônio Conselheiro, who was distinguished as a determining character in an exponential time of Brazilian history, the war of Canudos. In this manner, we intend to link this analysis to the field of Brazilian Political-Social Thought, using the theoretical and methodological perspective of linguistic contextualism (Quentin Skinner, John Pocock), seeking to understand in which way the political thoughts coming from the interpreters manifest in the narratives built by themselves about Conselheiro (in the inter-relationship between author, text and context). It was opted to cut the analysis of the two most evident interpretative canons: the “euclideana” tradition, inspired by the narrative constructed by Euclides da Cunha in Os Sertões (from which derives the “euclideana” denomination) and the historiographical revisionism, initiated by the mid-twentieth century, having as major name the historian José Calasans - establishing it as an interpretive inflection, also called "Canudos not euclideano" (from which derives the “conselheirista” denomination). Thus, we conclude that, roughly speaking, the division between euclidiana and conselheirista discourses and characters is not rigid, nor aware of embracing the entire complex and contrasting narratives about the War of Canudos and Conselheiro, presenting in some points flagrant interpretative differences even within the same group. In that direction, this scission proved to be inaccurate (and partial at times), constituting basically just as thematic preference, as if they were formed two "research lines" about the same subject, which have different goals and approaches between itself - thus generating different (or even divergent) results also.