Revisiting the beginnings of Brazilian anthropology: Nina Rodrigues and Manoel Querino through African philosophy

Abstract

This paper revisits the beginnings of Brazilian anthropology by addressing a central question in the history of the social sciences: how different positions of enunciation participated in the production of knowledge about the Black population and were subsequently inscribed in disciplinary memory. The objective is to comparatively analyze works by Nina Rodrigues and Manuel Raimundo Querino, using categories formulated within African philosophy by Severino Ngoenha and José Paulino Castiano as analytical tools. Methodologically, this is a qualitative, bibliographical, documentary, and historical-interpretive study. Ngoenha’s critique of the epistemological status of ethnology is articulated with Castiano’s concepts of objectivation, subjectivation, and intersubjectivation, without equating African and Afro-Brazilian contexts. It is argued that Rodrigues and Querino, contemporaries involved in the production of knowledge about the Black presence in Brazil, express contrasting epistemological positions: while the former contributed to the objectivation of Black people through racialized and hierarchical categories, the latter constituted an important movement of Black self-inscription by emphasizing agency, culture, and the African contribution to the formation of Brazilian society. It is concluded that bringing the history of the social sciences into dialogue with African philosophy makes it possible not only to reconsider the objects and methods of emerging anthropology, but also to question the criteria through which certain agents become central or peripheral in disciplinary narratives.