Discurso, sujeito e verdade: um arquivo judeu na historiografia do Maranhão

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the production of an archive about being a Jew in Maranhão. Our corpora is limited to the work O Levante do Maranhão: “Jew, head of the mutiny”, Manoel Beckman, by researcher Maria Liberman, who, supported by similar references, brought the Jewish subject as an enunciative event in colonial Maranhão. In this sense, we bring the Foucauldian Discourse Analysis and its concepts to nuance our critique of historical continuity, at which time we consider our object of analysis, the work O Levante do Maranhão: Judeu, Cabeça do Motim: Manoel Beckman, and his defense of a character Jew playing a central role in the Maranhão revolution of 1684. Manoel Beckman's statements about the Jewish condition are identified and compared to a range of statements about the Jewish subject composing an archive of an entire era and society that built the image of the Jew in history in its processes of objectification and subjectivation, culminating in the formation of a discursive knowledge about that subject. In colonial Maranhão, this archive is retaken and its statements, produced by the inquisitorial device, intend to be enough to tell the truth about someone persecuted. Starting from this premise, and from the Foulcaultian assumptions, this work collaborates with a critique and contribution to a hermeneutics of the voiceless subject then invented by the devices of knowledge and power.