Black hands

Beatriz Nascimento, theory of history and brazilian historiography

Abstract

The article seeks to explore the mainly historiographical dimension and the theoretical-methodological approaches, propositions, advances, and limitations of Beatriz Nascimento (1942-1995) in her trajectory as a historian and theoretician of History. From the documentary point of view, we used the book-archive Beatriz Nascimento, Quilombola e Intelectual: Possibilidades nos dias da destruição (2018). In the development of the analysis we elaborate, through an analysis of the history of Brazilian Historiography, the symbolic intertwining of the connection “White hands/Black hands” that emerged from the intellectual relationships between the author and Brazilian historian José Honório Rodrigues back into the 1960s, in Rio de Janeiro, and argue that Beatriz Nascimento’s theoretical articulations amalgamated political, social and cultural discussions that gave rise to the first steps, in the social context of the contemporary Black Movements in the 1970-90s, of a Black Historiography in the Brazil, in a critical, decolonial and undisciplined anti-racist stance of politicization of knowledge and rejection of the colonial foundations of the Western epistemic rationale.