As viagens da expansão portuguesa na África e na América e os livros didáticos brasileiros: do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro aos anos 1980

Abstract

Modern society is grounded in time–space representations forged through European expansionism since the fifteenth century. The present study reflects on the relationship between historical narratives in Brazilian textbooks and the configuration of memories and representations of Portuguese voyages and navigations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It examines how these narratives have appeared in didactic texts from the late nineteenth century to the 1980s. In doing so, it draws on the theoretical contributions of French scholars Roger Chartier—representation, practice, and appropriation—and Michel de Certeau—tactic, strategy, and the polemological model. Their categories provide a framework for analyzing school culture from a historical perspective. The narrative methodology contributes to this ongoing study of how representations persist in memory and shape identities, especially regarding Brazil’s racial question and the decolonization of the curriculum and teaching materials, from a counter-colonial perspective.