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Índios no império do Brasil: A etnografia do IHGB entre as décadas de 1840 e 1860

2010; Duke University Press; Volume: 90; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2010-074

1527-1900

Roderick J. Barman,

Indigenous Health and Education

The indigenous peoples of what is now Brazil cannot be said to be neglected as a subject of scholarly research, but equally they do not figure in the first line in either Brazil or North America. Investigations of racial relations tend to focus on the African-Portuguese mix with scant regard to the fact that in the colonial and imperial periods Brazil was a tri-racial society. Works that focus on the indigenous peoples are accordingly to be welcomed. Kaori Kodama’s study promises an analysis of the attitudes toward the índios among the dominant society in the mid-nineteenth century, particularly the views expressed in the publications of the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, the cultural heart of the empire.In her introduction the author proposes a three-part structure to her study. The first section looks at the ways in which the dominant society reordered the existing and diverse images (in the broadest sense) of the indigenous into a single perception of “the Brazilian Indians,” who formed an integral part of the new Brazilian identity. The second considers how this new “ethnography” intermeshed with the conception of a Brazilian “nation,” and that nation’s history, both of which were under construction. The third section discusses how these conceptions influenced the actual treatment of the indigenous peoples by the imperial regime.The book’s goals are ambitious and not easy to achieve. The author’s approach is resolutely postmodern. The study ranges broadly, incorporating references to the work among others of Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Benedict Anderson, and Anthony Pagden. It draws on a wide (although not exhaustive) range of print sources. The text displays considerable intelligence when discussing specific points. However, all these merits cannot be said to carry the book to success.However much the “modern” (as opposed to the postmodern) in scholarship may suffer from a plethora of rationality and logicality, the approach does have the advantage, in respect to complex topics, of requiring a deft handling of concepts, a clear line of analysis, and a tight framework of organization. Kodama’s work would be transformed if such an approach had been adopted. As it is, it is difficult to trace a line of argument through the work due to a text fragmented into what can be termed stand-alone “gobbets” with subheadings, to a juxtaposing of disparate topics, and to a constant employment of lateral thinking. The basis on which specific topics are assigned to the three sections is not apparent. The text is replete with descriptions of other scholars’ views (“John Monteiro traça . . .” “Claude Blanckaert (1988) resalta . . . ,” pp. 129, 146), long quotations from both primary (often useful) and secondary sources (much less so), and authorial ruminations (p. 179). All these tend to crowd out the explication of the book’s central theme.That theme is, as this reviewer understands it, that a group of homens de letras (educated men or intellectuals) whose institutional base was the Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, founded in 1838, developed the conception of the indigenous peoples and concomitantly their role within the new nation-state, a conception that dominated government’s handling of those peoples. The intellectuals’ writings discussed by the author often antedated the Instituto’s founding (for example, one of 1818, another of 1823, pp. 215, 228), and not all the writers cited were members of that institution. The book’s subtitle is therefore inexact. The views expressed by the writers were, in addition, diverse, and it is difficult to deduce from the text just what the author considers the dominant vision of the índios to have been. This lack of precision is in good part due to Kodama’s being far more interested in postulating an etnografia and discussing how it emerged than in explaining the content of that ethnography in respect to the indigenous peoples.Reviewers occasionally reproach authors for not writing the book that the reviewer would have preferred. Such is not the present case. The topic itself, the evidence used, and (as already noted) many of the specific insights have the potential to make an excellent book. But — alas! — it is not.