Legado e reconhecimento: trajetórias de preservação da correspondência da prisão de Luiz Carlos Prestes (1936-1945)

Abstract

This thesis studies the trajectories of the preservation of Luiz Carlos Prestes' prison correspondence. Written between 1936 and 1945, the letters, tickets and telegrams that make up this correspondence were preserved through different actions, agents and institutions over more than eight decades, thus tracing different preservation trajectories. Thus, the objective of this investigation was to understand how, and from which relations of recognition, these preservation trajectories were constituted, from their writing to their publication and/or institutional safeguard. The notion of “trace” for Carlo Ginzburg (1989; 2007), thought from a dialectic of evidence and testimony, offered the theoretical lens through which the epistolary text was read in this research, allowing an evidentiary reading of the testimonies, and a testimonial reading of the evidence. In a complementary way, the notion of "recognition", as worked on by Ricoeur (2006), allowed us to consider the relationships between the subjects of the correspondence, their heirs, the institutions within which the letters were produced or circulated, and their preservation, as part of the same process. In this sense, the published epistolary text, the memories and biographies of the correspondents, the history of the institutions and powers that crossed their lives, were thought of as intertwined threads that make up the narrative fabric of this history of preservation.