Archives, criticism and politics

annotations for interpreting silences

Abstract

What is inherited when there is a collective commitment to forgetfulness? This is the question that opens this essay, which deals with the institutionalization (or not) of archives by art critics who dedicated themselves to architecture during the 1950s. The hypothesis explored is that these processes bear the marks of the civil military dictatorship that was installed in Brazil between the 1960s and 1980s, and the amnesty process. Concentrating on the study of the personal collections of Mário Pedrosa, Mário Barata and Quirino Campofiorito, this text analyzes the different processes that influenced the entry of documentation and books by these three critics into archives, museums and libraries. As an approach, the essay takes an unusual path: it starts from reflections on the work of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur in which the author addresses the relationships between forgetting, amnesty and mourning. However, the development of the text is also based on questions raised by a book of literature – Antes de Nascer o Mundo [Before the World was Born] by the Mozambican author Mia Couto –, above all, on what can be inferred from the action of her main character, the ‘silence tuner’.