Por mãos alheias: usos sociais da escrita na Minas Gerais colonial

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the social uses of writing by women in Minas Gerais from 1780 to 1822. The corpus of analysis selected has as main documents wills of the territory of Rio das Velhas District from the referred period which belongs to the Archives of the Institute of Gold / Brazilian Museums (IBRAM) / House Borba Gato in Sabará. We share the conviction that relationships with writing go far beyond the ability to write with your "own hands". Our objective was to make visible the pragmatics of the writing and not what was related to the writing skills. Searching the written forms of ordinary women thus became a great epistemic challenge. In this sense, we aimed to disengage from the conception that associates the relationships with the writing with a rigid architecture of communication systems to understand them in an open, versatile and creative space. Thus, the oral practice was a fundamental dimension of the phenomenon called literacy events. Our analyses were drawn by three sets of theoretical frameworks. Firstly, we based on authors who searched to understand the phenomena of literacy as well as on reflections of researchers who investigated the same phenomenon in a historical perspective. Secondly, we were supported by studies about the colonial period of our society. Finally, we used the Bakhtinian perspective. The theoretical propositions of Mikhail Bakhtin in recent decades has contributed to the development of analytical methods in different research areas, which somehow circumscribe the phenomena related to language in any of its modalities. We are focused on the textual construction process. Supported by literature that highlights the role of orality in written texts, it became possible to see how different women, especially those who could not read or write, were able to develop and write texts, even by the hands of others and thus use the writing.