ABSTRACT
Drawing on the complex and multidimensional definition of racial democracy established by Antonio Sérgio Alfredo Guimarães (myth, ideal and pact), we examine how “Casa-grande & senzala” takes part on the building of a racial-democratic consensus rehearsed in the 1930s in Brazil. In order to accomplish this goal, we analyze how Freyre puts forward a performative discourse on racial democracy, in which he supposedly verifies the non-racists interactions of Brazilians and, at the same time, brings forth a discourse on racial democracy as pedagogy, in which he dismantles racial stigmas associated with the African presence in Brazil, and celebrates the great contributions of African people to Brazilian culture. We intend to show how these linguistic actions generated in the text create a discursive force field that is paramount to the pact of racial democracy.
KEYWORDS:
Gilberto Freyre; intellectual history; racial democracy