Unique and different

autobiographies of two brazilian historians, Nelson Werneck Sodré and Boris Fausto

Abstract

In the Brazilian historiographic tradition, autobiographical texts are very rare, except for some interviews, published in academic journals, in cultural supplements or specific collections, in addition to academic memorials, as required by some public
competitions. In Brazil, as autobiographical works, understood as texts in the first person, of greater length and that cover public and private dimensions of the lives of historians, there are only two: Nelson Werneck Sodré (1911-1999) and Boris Fausto (1930-2023). Werneck is the author of five memoirs: Memórias de um soldado (1967), Memórias de um escritor (1970), A luta pela cultura (1990), A ofensiva reacionária (1992) e A fúria de Calibã: memórias do golpe de 64 (1994); while Fausto wrote two: Negócios e ócios: história da imigração (1997) e Memórias de um historiador de domingo (2010). From the life stories of these authors, we seek to identify narrative choices that reflect such distinctions as well as the proximity of “epistemic virtues” and “performance” within an area of expertise, so that such autobiographical narratives describe no only individual trajectories, as well as some intricacies of experience and academic discipline.