O debate entre literatura e história : a virada linguística e a historiografia acadêmica de Mato Grosso (anos 1990 a 2020)

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the question of how the historiography (writing of history) of Mato Grosso (represented by the Graduate Program in History at UFMT – PPGHis) incorporated the debate between literature and history, within the historical discipline, which has expanded since the 1970s and 1980s. The emphasis will fall on the New Cultural History, which is dedicated to studies at the confluence of history and literature and also the historiographical movement, currently in vogue, called “Linguistic Turn”, which entered history especially after the writing of the book A Meta-História by American historian Hayden White. Such movements, also known as the narrative paradigm, emphasize that the historian does not reproduce the past as it occurred, but rather produces a text. That it is not possible to see the past “through” the text, but one should look at the text itself, as being also historical and the result of an era. And finally, it denies the contrast between literature (especially poetic and artistic ones) and "scientific" historical texts, since both, although they have differences, help the historical reconstruction of the community and the time of which they were part. The central point of this thesis aims to observe how this debate, present in many countries where Western historiography is practiced as we know it, arrived in Mato Grosso. And how professional historians and linguists have discussed this question. The conclusion reached here, in this work, isthat the local historiography gradually appropriated many of the ideas contained in this debate, which became part of the historiographical environment, whether in teaching or in the writings of professionals in the historical discipline.