A etnografia de museus ancorada na memória social: o sistema de informação e inovação social do médium Chico Xavier

Abstract

This research is based on the ethnographic experience unfolded at Casa de Memórias e Lembranças Chico Xavier located in Uberaba – Minas Gerais, in order to promote reflections intrinsic to the museological context of this museum-home of the medium from Minas Gerais, place of his last dwelling and production environment of an evangelizing complex of Spiritism. Through the ethnographic study of the museum, we developed an interpretation of the relationship between the public and private worlds of Chico Xavier, between cultural and museological heritage, and between the expographic narratives and the mnemonic devices activated not only by or about the medium, but also intrinsic to Kardecism. What also puts in evidence the ritualistic, processes and spiritist cosmovision, as well as controversies around the act of remembering and forgetting within the doctrine itself. This study leads us to the acknowledgment that, sustained by charity and evangelization practices, Chico Xavier led to the conformation of an information system based on technologies aimed at social innovation through the articulation of his devotional experiences under his personalistic action. The modeling of this knowledge management at Chico Xavier’s style, which foresaw the handling of several communication supports and languages, was based on two basic fronts, since both social assistance and editorial production were conditioning factors in the delineation of his missionary practice. At the same time, Spiritism was being spread throughout Brazil through the agency of people and institutions and the conformation of spiritist territories in expansion with adherence and financing, including from an agricultural and cattle-raising oligarchy that flirted with modernity. In this sense, the inspiration in Eurocentric models related to collection practices and to the patrimonial perspective marked the models and regimes of doctrinal memory that were exposed, for example, in the conformation of the Exposição Espírita Permanente. In turn, the confrontation with other places of memory associated with Chico Xavier and Kardecism indicated interdictions, forgetfulness and fading, disputes for representation, legitimacy, in addition to the interests in a growing religious tourism market.