Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and the malaise of professionalization: between essay and difference (1948-1959)

Abstract

Focusing between the years of 1948 – date of a paradigmatic newspaper article entitled “Novos rumos da Sociologia” – and 1959 – the date of Visão do Paraíso thesis defense register –, we will attempt to punctually inscribe, in the broad and prolonged movement of professionalization of the discipline of history and social sciences, part of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s textual and discursive strategies in order to, in a plastic way, but not without tensions, stabilize in this decisive moment of changing conditions of intellectual production within the scope of the University of São Paulo. We will suggest, among other things, that the essay category is constituted, there, as a floating signifier mobilized in a performative way, in the sense of the order of discourse and disciplinary memory. Thus, by becoming a true practical instrument of classification that establishes similarities and differences in the act of nomination, especially if one thinks of the antithetical position represented by Gilberto Freyre, the use of the essay category fulfills the function of establishing the “new”, desired by prominent figures of that specific intellectual environment.