Literature as a method for urban history

“escrevivência”, orality, and research experiences

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 20th-century, historians have been facing a number of questionings concerning the position of subaltern groups in historiography. Notions such as history “from below”, of the “commons”, and similar ones emerge, in a diversity of studies, as pathways to a writing that does not reproduce mechanisms of knowledge coloniality (colonialidade de saber) and power hierarchies based upon class, gender, origin, and race. In urban history, territories and materialities understood before only as undesirable traces of outdated social orders in the face of bourgeois modern cities have recently gained attention: terreiros, quintais, and favelas (slums), i.e. territories of aphrodiasporic construction and sociability. In the midst of the modern dichotomies, these places—the “margins”—are seen primarily through the absence of elements from the modern bourgeoisie city—considered the “center”. The following paper aims to contribute to recent historiographic developments, by proposing a dialogue with black women’s literature, specifically through “escrevivência”, a concept created by Conceição Evaristo, which will be discussed based on research experiences lead on by undergraduate students. The partial conclusions from these works allows us to glimpse at epistemological changes concerning research methods and marginalized group’s positions in producing urban studies. By the production of a history that articulates academia and social actors, it becomes possible to construct particular lexicons suitable to understanding subaltern territories, not mainly naming said places as problems in need of solving, but to grant its historicity, legitimacy, and subjectivity.