Time Between Spaces: The Black Atlantic and the Recent Historiography of Slavery in Brazil

Abstract

This dissertation advances the sketch of a metaphorical model of long-term Historical time based on the idea of fractal spatiality as outlined by Paul Gilroy in his Black Atlantic – Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993). This task is carried out by combining aesthetics and analytical philosophy of History with post-colonial theory so as to perform a semantic exploration of the disciplinary vocabulary of History understood as social science. An exploration that, stemming from a reflection upon colonial slavery unfolded in the form of a review of the recent Brazilian historiographical production about the issue, deploys discursive strategies and analytical tools—such as diasporic time, Synchronisierung, rethoricity, etc.—that express a distinctive concern with an interpellation of the (excesses) of Eurocentrism, which is here depicted with an accent in its phallogocentric and racist axis. What results from this analysis is presented in the conclusion (Time Between Spaces: fractal spatiality and long-term Historical time), a theoretical effort that, by assuming the semblance of a mirrored dialogue with Fernand Braudel’s longue durée, spells out its own political-epistemological consequences and faces thus its limits.