The nineteenth century in São Paulo: Memories of the grito do Ipiranga

Abstract

The article examines aspects of documentary, literary and iconographic interpretation of the Grito do Ipiranga, which occurred in São Paulo in 1822. It seeks to demonstrate that the act of reading and interpreting a stream of documentation about a certain subject could very well characterize the search for an absolute truth. Criticized in the paper are historiographical models established during the nineteenth century and legitimized by the collective memory - in other words a method supported by the 'technicist' reasoning of the sociocultural models then predominant. It is also sought to understand the background of these formative ideas and to propose a non-positivist interpretation which could drive research beyond the permanence of cultural values disseminated by the aforementioned historiography.