Analfabetismo, práticas de cura e população negra: uma análise da produção discursiva da imprensa brasileira na década de 1850

Abstract

The article aims to analyze how, in the middle of the 19th century, associations between illiteracy, healing practices and the black population were produced in the Brazilian press. From a theoretical and methodological point of view, the work is based on studies of Cultural History and Discourse Analysis. As main research sources, we mobilized the periodical press and dictionaries. In particular, we analyzed six articles published in newspapers from Rio de Janeiro and Pernambuco in the 1850s. In the texts analyzed, it is possible to visualize the discursive strategies mobilized by the authors of publications in the press to produce effects on potential readers that the illiterate, poor and black subject is someone who should be excluded from the march of the progress and the civilization. Their knowledge was disqualified and often ridiculed. Black people were more closely associated with barbarism, as they were considered similar to animals and had their cultural and spiritual manifestations more directly associated with witchcraft and sorcery.