Comic books and the Brazilian military dictatorship: methodological triangulation as an investigative criterion of the historical ideas of Brasilian young students⁸

ABSTRACT

It is investigated how to inventory the historical comic books that deal with the Brazilian Military Dictatorship of 1964-1985 that make it possible to mobilize the aesthetic, political and cognitive dimensions of the historical culture (RÜSEN, 2016) of the young Brazilian students of public schools. This research is linked to the project CAPES Memórias Brasileiras: Conflitos Sociais named Indígenas, Quilombolas e Napalm: uma história da guerrilha do Vale do Ribeira (2015-2019). It is based on a methodological triangulation based on the understanding of historical processes linked to the relationship between structures of feelling (WILLIAMS, 2003) belonging to youth culture, the relationship between interculturality and the new humanism (RÜSEN, 2014) and on the principle of “burdening history” proposed by Bodo von Borries (2016), which proposes that the burden of history can be overcome by the multiperspectivated interpretation instituting controversy provided by self-criticism in the theory of history. It is searched, from the inventory of the typology of historical comic books that narrate the historical experiences related to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, the creation of a research instrument that allows the construction of a history comic book about the Guerrilla of the Valley of Ribeira.

Keywords: History Education; Burdening History; Structure of feeling; Historical comic books; Brazilian military dictatorship.

RESUMO

Investiga-se como inventariar as histórias em quadrinhos que abordam a Ditadura Militar Brasileira de 1964-1985 que possibilitam mobilizar as dimensões estética, política e cognitiva da cultura histórica (RÜSEN, 2016) dos jovens estudantes brasileiros de escolas públicas. Essa investigação é ligada ao projeto da CAPES Memórias Brasileiras: Conflitos Sociais, denominado Indígenas, Quilombolas e Napalm: uma história da guerrilha do Vale do Ribeira (2015-2019). Parte-se de uma triangulação metodológica fundamentada na compreensão dos processos históricos vinculados à relação entre as estruturas de sentimento (WILLIAMS, 2003) pertencentes a cultura juvenil, a interculturalidade e o novo humanismo (RÜSEN, 2014), e ao princípio da “burdening history” proposto por Bodo von Borries (2016), o qual propõe que o fardo da história pode ser superado pela interpretação multiperspectivada instauradora de controvérsia provida pela autocrítica na teoria da história. Busca-se, a partir do inventário da tipologia das histórias em quadrinhos que narram as experiências históricas relacionadas à Ditadura Militar Brasileira, a criação de um instrumento de investigação que possibilita a construção de uma história em quadrinhos paradidática sobre a Guerrilha do Vale do Ribeira.

Palavras-chave: Educação Histórica; Fardo da história; Estrutura de sentimento; Histórias em quadrinhos; Ditadura militar brasileira.

Introduction

This article intends to inventory how the comic books that approach the Brazilian Military Dictatorship of 1964-1985 allow to understand the aesthetic, political and cognitive dimensions of the historical culture in Brazil that expresses the structures of feeling that the subjects have about that time. The work is produced from the group of historian professors linked to the Ibero-American Association of History Education Researchers (AIPEHD), the Research Laboratory in History Education (LAPEDUH/UFPR) and the History Education Researcher Group: historical consciousness and visual narratives (GPEDUH / UFMT) that are part of the Brazilian Memories Project: Social Conflicts - Indigenous, Quilombolas and Napalm: a history of the Ribeira Valley guerrilla, which investigates historical cognition based on the Epistemology of History (SCHMIDT, 2009).

It begins with the concern to understand the historical processes related to the relationship between the structure of feelings (WILLIAMS, 2003) belonging to youth culture and expressed by the historical culture of a community (RÜSEN, 2016), interculturality and the new humanism (RÜSEN, 2014) and the “burdening history” principle proposed by Bodo von Borries (2016), who understand that the burden of history can be overcome by the instituted multiperspectivated interpretation of the controversy afforded by self-criticism in history theory (FREITAS, 2017).

In this paper I intend to construct a typology from the inventory of historical graphic narratives that tell the historical experiences related to the Brazilian military dictatorship in 1964 to 1985. This typological research will be the basis for the development of research tools as methodological criteria, in the future, to investigate the historical ideas of young Brazilian students about the Ribeira Valley Guerrilla in 1970.

The narrative forms of comic books as an expression of structures of feeling in relation to the history culture

According to Jörn Rüsen (2014, p. 296), interculturality starts from the principle of the equal recognition of cultural difference that surpasses the ethnocentric understanding based on the tolerance given by the civilized to the uncivilized. The struggles for recognition are at the basis of contemporary cultural conflicts. However, it is in the field of these conflicts that the chances of intercultural communication come to fruition, because “cultures interpenetrate, delimit themselves against each other, fight each other, learn from each other and change in a mutual relationship.” This humanistic intercultural communication is done through historical narratives in constant dialogues.

If we understand that the burden of history can be overcome by the multiperspectivated interpretation instituted by the controversy afforded by self-criticism in the theory of history (FREITAS, 2017), we can see that dealing with the burden of history is a problem relative to the mental operations of the historical narrative. For Bodo von Borries (2016), there are ways of dealing with difficult histories. In his investigations he constructed a typology of the narrative forms of the history burdens: 1) hostile histories in a model of revenge and “blood rivalry” (inherited enmity) linked to empirical studies of historical culture (autobiographies, novels, interviews, historical narratives); 2) the history of the winners and the loss/forgetfulness of the defeated (cynicism of power); 3) the hidden and subaltern history of the defeated and the hope for a historical remembrance (heroism of remembrance); 4) abandonment and forgetfulness of hostile history due to irrelevance to practical life (priority for survival in violent moments). These histories were generated by suffering and do not allow for a historical reconciliation. Achieving a reconciliation between former enemies (victims and executioners) is a historical experience of a movement towards one another and the pursuit of continuing to follow the same path together. The way of making humans more human (BORRIES, 2016, p. 32-33).

It is possible to develop mental strategies of historical reconciliation through historical narratives, comic books among them. Among the first steps in this reconciliation is the need to abolish biased falsifications and myths, distancing oneself from the past of suffering and rivalry, without, however, forget it. Among the intermediate steps is the movement of one towards the other, seeking to walk together to build the chances and conditions for a common future. Finally, it is important to focus on advanced steps of mutuality, constructing new, plausible and compatible histories, even if at least partially common, thereby developing the recognition of “others” and mutual acceptance and internalization in one’s own history (BORRIES, 2016, p. 40-41).

I argue that the category of structure of feeling developed by Raymond Williams (2003) can be articulated with the ways of narrating the burden of history and the mental strategies of historical reconciliation investigated by Bodo von Borries (2016) as well as with the category of historical culture proposed by Jörn Rüsen (2016). This is because comic books are artifacts of historical culture that express the structures of feeling of a community relative to its past. The structure of feeling can be described as a relational culture, that is, the common culture lived of an era. It is a “structure” that “ operates in the most delicate and least tangible parts” of human activity. Cultural artifacts such as comic books are expressions of this structure of feeling because they include “characteristic approaches and tones in argument” due to the fact they are accessible to documented communication from where the “actual living sense” is extracted from the deep community that makes communication possible. With this, a generation can form its successor, but the new generation will have a distinct structure of feeling: the new generation appropriates its own unique world way, even considering the continuities and reproduction of numerous elements of its culture, she feels her life differently and sets her “creative response” into a new structure of feeling. This process is constitutive of a “selective tradition” that corresponds to a contemporary system of values and interests based on a commitment to the past (WILLIAMS, 2003, p. 57-60).

According to Raymond Williams (2003, p. 70, 87), the structures of feeling of an age lie in the “interaction” between the different “social characters” of a society. The “social character”⁹ is a selective response to the historical experiences of subjects linked to a system learned to feel and act in a community. It is possible to identify an epistemological closeness between these social characters that produce structures of feelingwith the ways of narrating the difficult histories and the mental strategies of historical reconciliation developed by Bodo von Borries (2016), since they express the values, meanings and feelings of the different subjects historical situations in conflict situations such as those existing in the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. This considering that its reflexes or reverberations in the 21st century.

In investigating historical graphic narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, the clashes present in the aesthetic dimension of comic books can reveal the narrative structure of feeling in the basic conception that someone tells someone a history about an experience of the past interpreted in the present and that creates expectations of the future. Therefore, it is the narrative, argumentative, communicative and therefore dialogic framework that defines comic books as cultural artifacts where the aesthetic dimension provides a sentiment of life and new meanings to the cognitive, political, ethical and religious dimensions of the historical culture of a community.

A typology of the ways of thinking about the comic books as an expression of the structures of feeling related to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship

In this research I intend to develop a methodological triangulation between the categories related to narrative histories and the mental strategies of historical reconciliation (BORRIES, 2016) and the structures of feeling (WILLIAMS, 2003) expressed by the comic books about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship¹⁰. This, to inventory how this historical experience of the military dictatorship is demarcated in the Brazilian historical culture from these cultural artifacts¹¹.

In this inventory I found two structural types in the historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship of 1964-1985¹²: a) the comic books that depersonalize the historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship from the perspective of didactic transposition; b) the comic books that personalize the historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship from a historical sense-generation. These ways of thinking about narrating the difficult histories and the possible strategies of historical reconciliation in the comic books express different structures of feeling in Brazilian historical culture.

a) Comic books that depersonalize historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (didactic transposition)

This type of comic books that depersonalize historical narratives from didactic transposition is characterized by the devaluation of subjects who act historically, since they are framed or didatized by means of an anonymous and generalizing narrative¹³. In general, these narratives appear in the form of didactic materials or as works of historical dissemination of didactic character.

Among the didactic comic books produced in the context of the Brazilian military dictatorship is the didactic textbook of Julierme, Colonnese and Zalla (1970), organized as a historical graphic narrative. This didactic manual had a conception of history teaching linked to the practice of memorizing and retaining specific historical information from a traditional and generic narrative. This conception of objective teaching was related to the understanding of history as a traditional objective knowledge (WALSH, 1978).

FIGURE 1
THE URBAN GUERRILLA AND THE KIDNAPPING OF THE US AMBASSADOR

The didactic depersonalization is visible in Figure 14 on the chapter titled Governos Kubitschek a Garrastazu [Médici Governments Kubitschek to Garrastazu Médici] in the textbook História do Brasil: História para a Escola Moderna [History of Brazil: History for the Modern School]. In spite of the daring to present the theme of dictatorship and resistance actions in a textbook published during the Military Dictatorship, the described action of the urban guerrilla movements of Brazil (called by the author in the last legend of “terrorists”), the kidnapping of the American ambassador, is didactised in a poorly contextualized way, as it does not explain historically why these subjects kidnapped foreign ambassadors in exchange for the release of political prisoners.

It is noticeable how the aesthetic elements of a historical graphic narrative can, through the image, potentialize the potential development of historical learning, but at the same time, the limitation of the aesthetic characteristics of the text can oppose and mitigate the imaginative power of the images. The narrative forms in which the burden of history presents itself in these historical comic books are between the history of the victors and the loss and forgetfulness of the defeated tied to the cynicism of power, for it incorporates the official narrative of the regime that called the military coup of 1964 the “movement of 1964”, and a hidden and subaltern history of defeated turned to the hope of a historical remembrance in addressing the kidnapping of the American ambassador (BORRIES, 2016).

There is, in this comic book, a contradiction in the structures of feeling of Brazil of the 1970s between the dominant social character of society at the time, a largely official and authoritarian perspective linked to the indication of Institutional Act No. 5 and the larger image of Emílio Garratazu Médici, and the social character of an alternative structure of feeling mobilized by the information of the American ambassador’s kidnapping. The alternative character lies in the aesthetic dimension presented by the confrontation of the prominent image of the ambassador and the information that the “terrorist” guerrillas achieved what they wanted: the liberation of political prisoners. An implicit embryonic structure of feeling concerning “radical human dissent” (WILLIAMS, 2003, p.74) is even implicit here, even though the prevailing narrative of this artifact of historical culture is traditional, and therefore not reconciliatory.

There are comic books about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship that are characterized by historical dissemination with didactic pretentions. I put it in the category linked to didactic transposition because in the chapter Começa a Ditadura [Beginning the Dictatorship] of the historical graphic narrative O golpe de 64 [The coup of 64], Oscar Pilagallo and Rafael Rocha (2014) depersonalize the historical subjects in favor of a great fragmented and desincretized narrative.

FIGURE 2
MILITARY REPRESSION AND URBAN GUERRILLA

The images of the pictures in Figure 15 do not present a history of the subjects in action, but the subjects’ actions are represented in a determinist history based on inexorable causes and consequences, but, as presented in the squares, disconnected.

FIGURE 3
THE MURDER OF CARLOS LAMARCA

The aesthetics used to narrate these two pages (Figures 15 and 16) either through torture, the action of urban guerrilla groups, or by the canonical presentation of the image of the murdered Carlos Lamarca is accompanied by historical relativization by presenting the victory of the Brazilian Selection team at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. A spectacularisation of the historical narrative is made evident by the explicitness of the culture of the spectacle’s violence, which is expressed by a narrative form based on hostile histories in a model of revenge (BORRIES, 2016). This narrative form of hostile history directed toward revenge expresses a structure of feeling linked to a memory of suffering based on the brutality of the repression of the Brazilian authoritarian state. It is also reinforced by the use of the aesthetic strategies peculiar to the horror comic books of the 1970s. This aesthetic spectacle of state violence represented in disjointed and terrifying images of the suffering of its victims weakens the denunciatory content that this graphic narrative was intended to convey.

I now seek to invent ways of telling difficult histories that find strategies of historical reconciliation in comic books that dialogue with the possibility of revealing structures of feeling that are based on a radical human dissidence based on the new humanism defended by Jörn Rüsen.

b) Comic books that personalize the historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (historical sense-generation)

This type of comic book that personalizes historical narratives is characterized by the humanization of the subjects who act historically for a narrative that gives sense of temporal orientation to history. This sense of temporal orientation is based on historical formation related to representations of meaningful continuity (historical interpretations), to criate perspectives of action for the future from the historical narrative (RÜSEN, 2014).

In this sense, historical formation, as a praxis, is organized in the objective of realization of existence in the social struggle, in the defense of the very convictions that determine subjectivity and the relationship with other subjects and with nature. These convictions must be weighed by structured argumentation for the validity of historical narratives, thus allowing the expression of an emancipatory formative sense (RÜSEN, 2007). The historical sense-generation present in certain comic books expresses a structure of feeling linked to a radical human dissidence (WILLIAMS, 2003). In this inventory I found that this type of historical graphic narrative is artifacts of historical culture that dialogue with (self) biographies.

A biographycal comic book that approaches the context of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the light of the history of the musical movement called Clube da Esquina is evidence of the existence of alternative structures of feeling aimed at a historical sense-generation. In the work Histórias do Clube da Esquina [Histories of the Clube da Esquina], the artists Laudo Ferreira and Osmar Viñole (2011) present how the relation with the musicians in the confrontation of the censorship was given.

FIGURE 4
THE CENSORSHIP OF THE ALBUM “MILAGRE DOS PEIXES”

Figure 17 presents Márcio Borges narrating the censorship on the song “Hoje é dia de El Rey” [“Today is the day of El Rey”] of the album “Milagre dos Peixes” [“Miracle of the Fishes”] produced in 1973 whose censured lyrics was composed by Milton Nascimento and Márcio Borges. The composer recounts that Milton Nascimento was summoned to attend the DOPS (Department of Political and Social Order) to provide “clarifications”. As a result, instead of abandoning the song, Milton Nascimento writes it without lyrics as an act of resistance.

FIGURE 5
THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MUSICAL WORK INTO RESISTANCE

Márcio Borges narrates that, from the resistance to censorship, the process of the album construction was transformed, since great artists began to participate in the recording of the same one, causing “Milagres dos Peixes” to become one of the musical masterpieces of the Brazilian culture. This brief narrative has a genetic character because it presents a conception of historical sense-generation based on the transformation (RÜSEN, 2007): from the fear produced by censorship to dissident freedom to create a work that expresses a structure of feeling linked to the universal historical meaning of the union of the human being with nature and its history. It is part of a way of narrating a difficult history where historical subjects narrate a hidden history that looks for a historical remembrance about the memory of the censorship for a strategy of historical reconciliation (BORRIES, 2016) with the Brazilian society and its past. This is presented in the pictures of the Figure 18 that mobilizes the images of the Afro-Brazilian singer Clementina de Jesus singing “Escravos de Jó” or the Afro-Brazilian musician Naná Vasconcelos who introduced the African rhythms and sonorities in the compositions of Milton Nascimento. Here, the aesthetic dimension of Brazilian historical culture expresses an alternative and humanistic structure of feeling (WILLIAMS, 2003).

Another example of comic books with historical characters about the Brazilian military dictatorship through (self)biographies is present in the comic book with historiographical narrative Herói de Guerra [War Hero] in the graphic novel Notas de um tempo silenciado [Notes of a Silenced Time], by Robson Vilalba (2015). In it is narrated the biography of an Afro-Brazilian guerrilla leader, Osvaldo Orlando da Costa, nicknamed Osvaldão, who fought in the Araguaia Guerrilla, the most violent of battles against the Armed Forces during the military dictatorship. He was a well-integrated guerrilla with the peasant communities of the region of Araguaia as depicted in Figure 19 through the images of the comic book.

FIGURE 6
OSVALDÃO, THE UNBREAKABLE: A BLACK GUERRILLA OF ARAGUAIA

Due to the integration with the working peasant community, many legends revolved around the struggles of Osvaldão against the Brazilian army expeditions. Surviving two highly-equipped military expeditions, the local population claimed that this character was unbreakable (bullets did not hit him). According to existing documentation, the military only murdered him on a third expedition. However, even so, many local peasants report to this day that he has become a bird and flew (Figure 20).

FIGURE 7
OSVALDÃO, THE UNBREAKABLE: A BLACK GUERRILLA OF ARAGUAIA

This historiographical narrative of a black guerrilla, even based on abundant written and oral documentation, is also a hidden history that seeks a hope of remembrance and is based on a memory of heroism, which guarantees the diversity of counter-hegemonic traditions, but does not reach a historical reconciliation with the past (BORRIES, 2016, pp. 32-38). This is because even today the rural guerrilla of Araguaia, as well as the guerrilla of the Ribeira Valley, is a taboo for Brazilian historiography and even more for military historiography. However, the comic book is imbued with an alternative structure of feeling, because it tells a communion of values of mutual solidarity and cooperation that this guerrilla had with the peasant working class of Brazil.

In this inventory, a relevant self biographical comic book about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship is “1968: Ditadura Abaixo” [“1968: Dictatorship Below”], by Teresa Urban and Guilherme Caldas (2008). In this historical graphic narrative is perceptible the presence of an alternative and dissident structure of feelings in relation to the authoritarian social character of the dictatorial regime in the state of Paraná. This comic book tells the history of resistance of the students of the Federal University of Paraná against state violence. The authors use fictitious names to preserve the identity of historical subjects, since the issue of the violence of the dictatorship also showed contradictory repercussions in the Paraná and Brazilian society in 2008.

FIGURE 8
STUDENT RESISTANCE IN PARANÁ

Figure 21 depicts a moment of historical remembrance of student resistance in 1968 through a historical source, a report in the newspaper Tribuna do Paraná, and the images of comic books of the moment students threw marbles on the horses of the repressive police dictatorship. The aesthetic dimension presented in this artifact of historical culture mobilizes the political dimension of dissent present in the memory of subjects who were students in the dictatorial period. Here there also is a way of narrating based on a hidden history of the vanquished who seek a historical remembrance through the heroic construction of resistance (BORRIES, 2016). This narrative expresses a structure of feeling based in a radical human dissidence (WILLIAMS, 2003) of solidarity and resistance against the authoritarian policies of the state that prevailed in great part of the Paraná student movement even after the regime of exception.

FIGURE 9
STUDENT RESISTANCE IN PARANÁ

However, Figure 22 also reveals the authoritarian and dehumanizing social character of military repression by recounting the violence that police officers used to arrest and demobilize students. Here it is shown a way of narrating that does not hide a hostile history marked by the revenge model (BORRIES, 2016), typical of the dictatorial state in Brazil in 1968.

In the course of this inventory I found a historical graphic narrative that presents a perspective of historical reconciliation with the past. By presenting historical characters who faced and suffered the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, the narrative is a didactic dissemination of the struggle for reparations of the injustices committed in the period. Composed by the students of the Federal Fluminense University, Joana D'Arc Fernandes Ferraz, Elaine de Almeida Bortone and Diana Helene (2012), the self biographical comic book history named Brasil: ditadura militar: um livro para os que nasceram bem depois... [Brazil: military dictatorship: a book for those born beyond...] is a remembrance which expresses a structure of feelings that seeks to reconcile the suffering of loss during the state of exception.

One of the authors, in narrating the moment of childhood when she asked her mother where her father was (Figure 23), presents in the pictures her mother telling the history of struggles against the dictatorship. It recalls the various moments in which she and her husband fought against the constituted powers.

FIGURE 10
THE GIRL ASKS THE MOTHER WHERE HER FATHER IS

One of the most striking moments was when his father and his mother were linked to the guerrilla movements of resistance to the dictatorship (Figura 24), because they opted for armed struggle instead of peaceful forms of resistance. It was at this point in the struggle that his father disappeared during a violent process of military repression.

FIGURE 11
THE ARMED STRUGGLE BY THE GUERRILLA MOVEMENTS

As a form of resistance, as shown in Figure 25, the daughter who tells the history of her mother represents herself struggling in favor of the law of the disappeared politicians whose objective is to recover information about the people murdered by the Brazilian military dictatorship.

FIGURE 12
DRAFT LAW ON POLITIC DISAPPEARED (LAW 111/1991)

This is, therefore, a historical narrative that pursues the first steps and the intermediate steps of a historical reconciliation with the past of violence and suffering (BORRIES, 2016). This is because it seeks to abolish historical falsifications and tendentious myths constructed by both the left and the right-wing bias when it remembers the period of exception. The narrative seeks a distance from the past, but not its forgetfulness. But the intermediate steps have also been taken, since this (self) biographical narrative seeks a direction in relation to the others in the search for a united walk in the fight so that all those who suffered with the loss of relatives and friends in the dictatorship had the right to know what happened in that still disappeared past¹⁴. This historical graphic narrative expresses a structure of feeling of radical human dissidence (WILLIAMS, 2003) by means of a search of the historical sense-generation conditions for a common future among Brazilians.

Final considerations

In this research I inventory two structural types in the historical narrative narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship, on the one hand the comic books that depersonalize the historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship from the perspective of the didactic transposition, on the other, the comic books that personalize the historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship from a historical sense-generation.

It is noticeable that the comic books that depersonalize the narratives, through both didactic transposition as the textbooks of history and as graphic narratives of historical divulgation, narrate by means of a spectacularization of the violence against the guerrillas in the Brazilian military dictatorship. The characteristic of this depersonalization lies in the fact that the histories of the historical personagesare spectacularized because the historical context is aesthetically dimensioned as a deterministic structure. The depersonalizing and disintegrating didactic transposition was the conception of history teaching that less appeared in this inventory of comic books about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship.

With regard to comic books that depersonalize the narrative forms of difficult histories, I have shown that there are two predominant structures of feeling. One is based on a memory of official and brutal repression by means of state violence which, in these comic books, appears either as acceptance of this state of affairs or as a denunciation of it. Another structure of feeling, with an alternative social character, is the victimization memory of the subjects who suffered this violence, which is marked by the spectacular images of the torture and murders that the state committed against its opponents.

The comic books that personalize the historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship from the historical sense-generation have (self) biographical character and allow to affirm that the aesthetic and political/ethical dimensions of the historical culture mobilize the generation of the temporal sense through histories of strong historical personages loaded of significant historical experiences.

As a synthesis of the type referring to the comic books that personalize the historical narratives about the Brazilian Military Dictatorship through the historical sense-generation, it is possible to verify that it predominates a way of narrating the difficult histories of that period by means of a history of the subalterns that constructs a history of the heroism of resistance - artistic, student and working - against the political violence of Brazilian authoritarianism (BORRIES, 2016). Even recognizing the existence of a traditional structure of feeling based on a model of revenge and brutality of the dictatorial state’s adepts, these (self) biographical narratives express an alternative structure of feeling based on models of mutual cooperation of a social character of human dissidence workers, students and subalternates (WILLIAMS, 2003).

Because of this, new possibilities open up: the investigation of comic books about the Ribeira Valley Guerrilla produced by students of public schools in this place and in other regions of Brazil, and the construction of a script of a didactic comic book about the Ribeira Valley guerrilla developed by history teachers.

I conclude with a passage by the novelist Mary Ann Evans, also known as George Eliot, quoted by Raymond Williams (2003, p. 75) to describe the structure of feeling that existed during the conflicts and revolutions of 1848

The day will come when there will be a temple of white marble, when sweet incense and anthems will rise to the memory of every man and woman who has had a deep Ahnung, a presentiment, a yearning, or a clear vision of the time when this miserable reign of Mammon shall end - when men shall be no longer “like fishes of the sea” - society no more like a face one half of which - the side of profession, of a lip-faith - is fair and God-like, the other half - the side of deeds and institutions - with a hard old wrinkled skin puckered into the sneer of a Mephistopheles.

In 1970, a comic strip expresses a similar, but diverse, structure of feeling. Named “Napalm” contra plantação de maconha [“Napalm” against marijuana planting] (Figure 26), in it the Brazilian cartoonist Henfil reports that napalm bombs were being launched against the guerrilla resistance to the military dictatorship in the Ribeira Valley and against the indigenous people of the northern region of Brazil, who also resisted against the regime of exception.

FIGURE 13
“NAPALM” AGAINST MARIJUANA PLANTING

These alternative images (SALIBA, 1999) are humorous and refer to the information published by the censored press in the year 1970, as it contained false reports of military attacks on illegal marijuana plantations with these types of bombs when, in fact, occurred massacres militarized against resistant Brazilian youngsters and indigenous. Henfil’s comic strips are presented, as was the style of this comic book, while a narrative form focused on a model of revenge aimed at recalling the struggles of the subalternized ones, nevertheless express a structure of feeling based on a radical human dissidence based on the solidarity of an egalitarian humanity.

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• 1
  Researcher Group History Education: Historical Consciousness and Visual Narratives (GPEDUH-UFMT), Federal University of Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Brazil. Research Laboratory in Historical Education (LAPEDUH-UFPR), Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil. Thanks also to the CITCEM - Center for Transdisciplinary Research “Culture, Space and Memory” - University of Porto, Portugal, where I develop my postdoctoral stage under the supervision of Profª. Drª. Isabel Barca, for enabling the conditions of time and structure for the accomplishment of this article. Translate:The author.
• 2
  The concept of social character was developed by Erich Fromm (1963) and appropriated by Raymond Williams (2003) for the purpose of constructing an analysis of culture from the functioning of the structures of feeling that mobilize the selective tradition in a community.
• 3
  I know the historiographic debate in relation to what was the authoritarian regime installed in Brazil from 1964 to 1985. I opted for the historical concept of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship because I understand that even with the civil, religious, institutional and business support that the other concepts (which I also consider valid) integrate and describe, the regime of violence imposed in Brazil was administered, organized and structured hegemonically by the military of the Brazilian Armed Forces of the period. I consider that the notion of the “1964 revolution” is false, since it has no historiographical and evidential validity with regard to the specific dictatorial experience that Brazil has experienced in the aforementioned historical period.
• 4
  The other tip of this methodological triangulation is linked to the future construction of a research instrument to understand how the Brazilian Military Dictatorship is present in the historical ideas of Brazilian young students. Also under construction by the historians professors of LAPEDUH is a screenplay of a comic book history about the historical culture of the people of the Ribeira Valley inspired, in part, in the theoretical assumptions that I discuss in this article.
• 5
  In this research I have chosen to approach only nonfiction comic books, since I intend to verify how the structures of feeling (WILLIAMS, 2003) based on the young culture and the ways of narrating and overcoming suffering by historical reconciliation from the “burdening history” (BORRIES, 2016) are expressed in graphic narratives that are based on an intersubjective relevance of the search for truth (RÜSEN, 2001). Also, for reasons of space in this article, I will not present all the comic books that exist in relation to each type that I found and also because they have been and will be used in other investigations with different purposes.
• 6
  The didactic transposition is based epistemologically, as affirmed by the French mathematician Yves Chevallard (2000), based on the pedagogy of the objectives and structured in didactic strategies such as the dessincretization, the depersonalization, the programmability and the publicity of the knowledge, besides the social control of the knowledge of this epistemology. These requirements structure what Chevallard calls the didactic system: the relation between academic knowledge, the knowledge to teach, the knowledge taught and the knowledge to be learned. This perspective is characterized by the idea that the teacher knows more than the student and that the transmission of knowledge is only possible if the student is a passive entity in this process. More than that, these subjects (teachers and students) are not the focus of this conception, because what matters, in fact, is the functioning of the didactic system, which, in the last analysis, makes the teacher also a passive subject to be considered a reproducer of this structure. Most of these didactic strategies are verifiable in this depersonalizer type of comic books about Brazilian Military Dictatorship.
• 7
  This claim is very significant, since even in 2018 the absolute majority of the documents produced and stored by the Brazilian Armed Forces about military repression and political disappearances have not yet been released, even under pressure from the National Truth Commission (CNV), which from 2012 to 2014 investigated the process of political violence carried out by the repression of the Brazilian military dictatorship.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 May 2019
• Date of issue
  Mar-Apr 2019

History

• Received
  18 Jan 2019
• Accepted
  29 Jan 2019