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