MEDIAÇÃO CULTURAL

A CONSTRUÇÃO DE UM FOLCLORE REGIONAL E AÇUCAREIRO POR MANUEL DIÉGUES JÚNIOR NA METADE DO SÉCULO XX

Abstract

The present study aims to analyze the role of Manuel Diégues Júnior (1912–1991) as an intellectual mediator of folkloric manifestations, forms of knowledge, and social relations, as well as a professional who moved across distinct fields of knowledge and occupations. From the perspective of intellectual history, we seek to identify how this folklorist developed the idea of a regional, sugar-based folklore in the Brazilian Northeast, understood as a regionalist cultural matrix. This analysis is conducted through dialogue with the historical context and prevailing ideas, based on the triad of generation, trajectory, and sociabilities in which he was embedded, in order to examine his political, social, and cultural position in the production of folkloric knowledge. From a theoretical standpoint, the study is grounded in the conceptions of Jean-François Sirinelli (1998; 2003), Angela de Castro Gomes and Patrícia Santos Hansen (2016), and Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior (2011; 2013), employing, respectively, the concepts of intellectual, mediating intellectuals, and folklore/Northeast—Northeastern folklore. These frameworks allow us to identify the regionalist formation of Manuel Diégues Júnior and to approach him as an intellectual who produced cultural mediation around the folkloric manifestations that shaped the Brazilian Northeast in the mid-twentieth century. Methodologically, the analysis is based on discourse analysis and on Michel Foucault’s (1999; 2008) notion of knowledge–power relations, through a critical examination of texts produced by Manuel Diégues Júnior on folkloric manifestations, such as Sugar Motifs in Folklore (1947), Regional Studies and Brazilian Geography (1949), Folklore and Region (1951), Region and Regionalism (1952), and Suggestions for a Regional Characterization of Brazilian Folklore (1967), which are available in the Digital Hemerotheques of the National Library and the National Center for Folklore and Popular Culture (CNFCP). Based on these sources, it is possible to observe that Manuel Diégues Júnior carried out a study of Brazilian society grounded in anthropological discussions surrounding the cultural practices of a sugar-based Northeast/Brazil.

Keywords: Manuel Diégues Júnior; Intellectual; Cultural Mediation; Folklore.