Um acervo em três dimensões: o indivíduo, o casal e a família na constituição do acervo Família Ávila

Abstract

In recent years, personal archives have been consolidated as an object of study in Archival Science. However, theoretical gaps still remain, particularly regarding the treatment of family papers. This research aimed to understand the formation and custody of a documentary collection produced by members of the same family, using as a case study the Ávila Family collection, which comprises the documentary sets of the writers Affonso Ávila, Laís Corrêa de Araújo, and Zilah Corrêa de Araújo, and held by the AEM/UFMG. The main objective was to analyze how the dimensions of the individual, the couple, and the family are manifested in a collection composed of parts of the archives of members of the same family. The investigation, qualitative and exploratory in nature, was based on bibliographic and documentary research, as well as on interviews. The analysis was supported by the archival principles of provenance, respect des fonds, and original order, and was conducted through contextual analysis, a model that encompasses the study of personal custody, custodial history, and archival intervention in the collection. The study revealed that the collection was jointly built by the couple Affonso and Laís, and that Zilah’s documentary set was selected and preserved by Laís both for inventory purposes and for emotional reasons. The custodial history showed that, before its transfer to the AEM, the collection underwent dispersal and fragmentation. At the AEM, the set underwent three arrangement changes, which altered the original organization of the documents. The current arrangement model adopts a contextual approach and seeks to preserve the relationships between the documents and their production context. This study concludes that, although the collection may be interpreted in different ways – as a family archive, as personal archives, or as a couple’s collection – its most appropriate configuration is that of a couple’s archive, due to the convergence of the personal and professional trajectories of Affonso and Laís. It is noteworthy that there is no specific methodological approach for the treatment of family archives, and that the choice of individualized, collective, or intersectional arrangement is a decision of the custodial institutions. The research reinforces the need for further theoretical development on family archives, with a view to preserving their organicity and representing the multiple relationships that constitute them.