Janos bifrontes: Paradojas en la percepción del mundo negro en el ensayismo brasileño, 1930-1950

Abstract

This article considers the problematic significance of the black culture in the works of Gilberto Freyre, and then analyses, in a comparative way, a series of essays written about the subject between 1930 and 1960, by some intellectuals (Arthur Ramos, Roger Bastide and Edison Carneiro). These authors are connected to the consolidation of the Afro-Brazilian studies in the field of the rising national anthropology. The aim of this work is to give density to the ideological debate about the value of the black culture in the formation of the national identity. Then it shows some difficulties and contradictions present in the work of these essay writers, who pretend to break with the preconcepts inherited from the positivism and in this way revalue the black world.