After the visit of the unwanted: Mourning and memory in the revista estudos feministas (2001-2014)

Abstract

Obituaries, within Brazilian academic journals are presented in various forms, ranging from standardized paragraphs that simply seek to inform readers, and which are determined by the research field or specific interest of the publication as news of a death. More elaborate texts are also found that present a profile of a predecessor or contemporary who produced a body of work and established links with his or her peers. The Revista Estudos Feministas (REF), currently published at the Federal University at Santa Catarina, was launched in 1992, and over the years has occupied a prominent position as a pioneer and privileged publication for the promotion of feminist and gender studies in various subject areas in the country. Since 2001, its issues are available on Scielo, and this collection includes almost two dozen homages to the deceased in the form of obituaries, posthumous interviews or essays. We discuss how these articles present a biographical nature and characterize a constructed and claimed group memory in which dimensions of mourning and intellectual and institutional relations of an academic publication allow facing the pain of loss in the symbolic universe of the group.