MEANING AND HISTORICITY IN THE TROPICS: SÉRGIO BUARQUE DE HOLANDA AND THE APORIAS OF HISTORICISM

Abstract

Based on transnational studies that point to the relevance of historicism as a key concept of historical thought, this article aims to revisit the reappropriation of the term carried out in the late work of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. In this article we claim that the author's approach to historicism represented the Brazilian chapter of a tendency of relativizingand readapting the modern concept of history to the multiethnic and multicultural real ity of Latin America. In this regard, the text raises the hypothesis that, especially in O atual e o inatuat em L. von Ranke (1974), Sérgio Buarque was concerned with the crisis of the old European matrix for the understanding of history. This concern helps to explain why he showed a strong interest in alternative and discontinuous perceptions on issues associated with the meaning of history.