Disappointments in Modernity: times, race and memory, questions about Lima Barreto’s "Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha" (1909)

tempos, raça e memória, questões a partir de “Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha” (1909), de Lima Barreto

Abstract

In 2022 we celebrated the centennial of the death of Lima Barreto (1881 - 1922), the Modern Art Week (1922) and the Bicentennial of Brazil's Independence (1822), three key moments in the country's literary, cultural and political history and memory. Many pages and pens have been spent in various works about Lima Barreto's work. However, the present article seeks to raise and elaborate questions about the experience of black time in Brazilian modernity. Its axis is the author's initial novel, that is, "Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha" (1909). To reflect on the experience of time, I propose to think about forms of temporalization of time and forms of temporalization of race, analyzing the First Republic and borrowing aspects of the writer's trajectory. Finally, we seek to think about the relationship between time, race, memory, and modernity through the dialogue between historiography and literature.