Mestiçagem as a historical concept

a theoretical description

Abstract

Besides being a central concept in discussions about race and identity in Brazil, mestiçagem has occupied a privileged place in the Brazilian intellectual tradition since at least the mid-nineteenth century. Many intellectuals have noted the centrality of mestiçagem and have produced critical investigations into the social implications of the concept, highlighting its function of concealing the violence of race relations in Brazilian history. Authors such as anthropologist Renato Ortiz and, more recently, sociologist and essayist Jessé Souza denounced the silent permanence of this and other categories with strong racial content in the Brazilian intellectual tradition even after the decline of scientific racism. However, few studies have attempted to describe how this concept works as an analytical category. In this article, we seek to formally describe the mechanics of the concept of mestiçagem from its characterization as an essentially historical concept. We will first define mestiçagem etymologically and semantically based on its cultural specificities and its differences from other formal categories that designate the phenomenon of hybridity, such as miscegenation and hybridization. Next, we approach mestiçagem to the ideas of origin and processuality, which give it its essentially historical quality and which determine its functioning as an analytical category or theoretical concept. Finally, we briefly discuss its centrality in Brazilian historical thought, centrality related to the use of the concept of mestiçagem to describe ambiguous, paradoxical, and dialectical historical phenomena.