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BRAZILIAN RACE RELATIONS, FRENCH SOCIAL SCIENTISTS, AND AFRICAN DECOLONIZATION: A TRANSATLANTIC HISTORY OF THE IDEA OF MISCEGENATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2019

IAN MERKEL
IAN MERKEL*
Affiliation:
Università di Torino, Dipartimento de Culture, Politica, e Società E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article analyzes how debates concerning Brazilian race relations, miscegenation, and racial democracy unfolded in France in the 1950s. During those years, Gilberto Freyre and those critical of him emerged in French social scientific discourse, offering distinct visions concerning race, culture, and the possibility of harmonious coexistence in a world structured by racial, social, and colonial inequalities. Certain French social scientists such as Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel embraced Freyre's vision as a possible source for racial and cultural mixing, whereas others, especially Alfred Métraux and Florestan Fernandes, directly criticized his work. Roger Bastide mediated between the two, translating Freyre's Casa-Grande & Senzala and coauthoring a UNESCO-based study on blacks and whites in São Paulo that largely repudiated Freyre's claims. I argue that in a period in which decolonization was already underway, Freyre piqued the interest of French social scientists looking to overcome the growing antagonism between colonizer and colonized, even if other models of cultural integration and autonomy contested the validity of Brazil's so-called racial democracy.

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Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 801 - 832
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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Footnotes

A special thanks to Herrick Chapman, Barbara Weinstein, Paulo Teixeira Iumatti, Stefanos Geroulanos, James Woodard, and Frédéric Viguier, as well as archivists Brigitte Mazon (EHESS) and Jamille Barbosa (Fundação Gilberto Freyre) and rights holders Monique Lévi-Strauss and Daniel Métraux. Thanks also to all of those who have commented on versions of this article, including Alice Conklin, Todd Shepard, Cibele Barbosa, Sebastián Gil-Riaño, Megan Brown, John Marquez, Matt Shutzer, Muriam Haleh Davis, Larissa Lira, Francisco Martinho, and Luiz Carlos Jackson. Research was made possible by a Fulbright–Hays DDRA grant, the Bourses Marandon from the Société des professeurs français et francophones d'Amérique, a CIRHUS-CNRS Visiting Research Fellowship at the Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale, and an NYU Global Research Initiative in Paris.

References

1 Braudel, Fernand, “A travers un continent d'histoire: Le Brésil et l'oeuvre de Gilberto Freyre,” Mélanges d'histoire sociale 4 (1943), 3–20, at 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Barthes, Roland, “Maîtres et esclaves de Gilberto Freyre,” Lettres nouvelles 1 (March 1953), 107–8, at 107Google Scholar.

3 For a pioneering article in this sense, see Barbosa, Cibele, “CASA GRANDE & SENZALA A questão racial e o ‘colonialismo esclarecido’ na França do Pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial,” Revista brasileira de Ciências Sociais 33/96 (2018), 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For more on Freyre's eclectic sociological method see, among others, Ricardo Benzaquen de Araújo, Guerra e paz: Casa-Grande & Senzala e a obra de Gilberto Freyre nos anos 30 (São Paulo, 1994)Google Scholar. Bastos, Élige Rugai, As criaturas de Prometeu: Gilberto Freyre e a formação da sociedade brasileira (São Paulo, 2006)Google Scholar. Burke, Peter, “Gilberto Freyre e a nova história,” Tempo Social 9/2 (1997), 1–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Pallares-Burke, Lúcia G. and Burke, Peter, Gilberto Freyre: Social Theory in the Tropics (Oxford, 2008)Google Scholar. Meucci, Simone, Artesania da Sociologia no Brasil: Contribuições e intepretações de Gilberto Freyre (Curitiba, 2015)Google Scholar. Peixoto, Fernanda Arêas, Diálogos brasileiros: uma análise da obra de Roger Bastide (São Paulo, 2010)Google Scholar.

4 Among others see Shepard, Todd, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, 2008)Google Scholar. Wilder, Gary, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham, NC, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cooper, Frederick, Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945–1960 (Princeton, 2016)Google Scholar.

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6 Luiz Felipe de Alencastro was among the first to critically analyze the ideological and geopolitical uses of mestiçagem in his article “Geopolítica da mestiçagem,” Novos Estudos 11 (Jan. 1985), 43–63Google Scholar. Freyre's particular version of lusotropicalism and his relation to Salazarist intellectuals have been analyzed by Thomaz, Omar Ribeiro, “Do Saber Colonial ao Lusotropicalismo: ‘Raça’ e ‘Nação’ nas Primeiras Décadas do Salazarismo,” in Maio, Marco Chor and Santos, Ricardo Ventura, eds., Raça, Ciência e Sociedade (Rio de Janeiro, 1996), 100–4Google Scholar. See also Macagno, Lorenzo, “Um antropólogo norte-americano no ‘mundo que o português criou’: Relações raciais no Brasil e Moçambique segundo Marvin Harris,” Lusotopie 6 (1999), 143–61Google Scholar. For a more state-centered history of Brazil's relation to African decolonization see Dávila, Jerry, Hotel Trópico: Brazil and the Challenge of African Decolonization, 1950–1980 (Durham, NC, 2010), esp. 11–26 and 108–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For more recent literature see the New Perspectives on Luso-tropicalism/Novas Perspetivas sobre o Luso-tropicalismo special edition Portuguese Studies Review 26/1 (2018)Google Scholar.

8 Gilberto Freyre Archive, Fundação Gilberto Freyre, Apipucos, Brazil (henceforth GF), Pasta FR 1956, Colóquio de CERISY.

9 In the following paragraphs, mestiçagem will be used as a noun for racial mixing; mestiço as its product, i.e. a mixed-race person; and mestiçamente as a created adverb that means similar to or by way of mestiçagem. For an extensive analysis on how Freyre understood it see Cahen, Michel, “A mestiçagem colonialista ou a colonialidade de Gilberto Freyre na colonialidade do Brasil,” Portuguese Studies Review 26/1 (2018), 299–349Google Scholar.

10 Freyre, Gilberto, O Mundo que o Português criou (Rio de Janeiro, 1940), 45–6Google Scholar. This book is a set of published lectures from 1937 onwards delivered by Freyre in England and Portugal, patronized by the Brazilian government.

11 Freyre, Gilberto, Tempo Morto e Outros Tempos (Rio de Janeiro, 1975), 32–3Google Scholar. For more on Freyre's time in Texas see Pallares-Burke and Burke, Gilberto Freyre, 24–5.

12 Scott, Joan W., “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17/4 (1991), 773–97, at 794CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One might wonder, for example, if Freyre's memories are those of American writers whom he likely read around the time rather than his own, especially considering his well-known tendency for exaggeration and self-aggrandizement. See, for example, Freeman, Elizabeth, “The Waco Horror,” supplement to Crisis, July 1916, reprinted in Rice, Anne P., ed., Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond (New Brunswick, 2003), 141–50Google Scholar.

13 For a history of black intellectuals’ formulations of racial democracy prior to and concomitant with those of Freyre see Alberto, Paulina L., Terms of Inclusion: Black Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century Brazil (Chapel Hill, 2011), esp. 178–81Google Scholar. For the Estado Novo and international representations see Graham, Jessica, “Question raciale, production culturelle et image démocratique du Brésil pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale,” Brésil(s) 13 (2018)Google Scholar, at http://journals.openedition.org/bresils/2569.

14 GF, Artigo 161, “Mestre Metraux em Salvador da Bahia,” O Cruzeiro, 8 Sept. 1951.

15 The word Latinité or Latindade (English: “Latinity”) is frequent in both Freyre's discourse and that of his French interlocutors. The concept's larger intellectual history has strong connections to the right. See, for example, Stieber, Chelsea, “Gérard de Catalogne, passeur transatlantique du maurrassisme entre Haïti et la France,” in Dard, Olivier, ed., Doctrinaires, vulgarisateurs et passeurs des droits radicales au XXe siècle (Europe–Amériques) (Bern, 2012), 233–54Google Scholar. Here and perhaps more generally in the postwar period, the word seems to be used as a proxy for anything anti-“Anglo-Saxon.”

16 Barthes, “Maîtres et esclaves de Gilberto Freyre,” 108.

17 For more on this question see, among others, Stoler, Ann Laura, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 2010)Google Scholar; and Saada, Emmanuelle, Les enfants de la colonie: les métis de l'empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté (Paris, 2007)Google Scholar. Based on the period and geography, White's, OwenChildren of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa, 1895–1960 (Oxford, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar is most relevant here.

18 From the state of São Paulo.

19 Brazilian historians and sociologists have emphasized the tense, and often conflicting, relationship that Freyre had with USP. In particular see Falcão, Joaquim, “A Luta pelo Trono: Gilberto Freyre Versus USP,” in Falcão, Joaquim and de Araújo, Rosa Maria Barboza, eds., O imperador das idéias: Gilberto Freyre em questão (Rio de Janeiro, 2001), 131–67Google Scholar. See also Mota, Carlos Guilherme, História e Contra-História: Perfis e Contrapontos (São Paulo, 2010), 167–84Google Scholar.

20 Arbousse-Bastide, Paul, Préface to Freyre, Gilberto, Um engenheiro francês no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1940), 2Google Scholar.

21 For more on this see Dausch, Andrew, “The French University Mission to Brazil, Racial theory, and the Formation of a New Social Science Paradigm,” in Félix, Régina R. and Juall, Scott D., eds., Cultural Exchanges between Brazil and France (West Lafayette, 2016), 119–35, at 127–30Google Scholar.

22 Cibele Barbosa, “Le Brésil entre le mythe et l'idéal: la réception de l'oeuvre de Gilberto Freyre en France dans l'après-guerre” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Sorbonne, 2011), esp. 138.

23 Recife may very well have been tacked on to Febvre's already packed schedule. He made no note of it in his agenda from the first weeks of his trip. He met Freyre in Rio, penciled in his agenda for 21 July 1949, at which point he likely made plans to go to Recife. Archives de l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Archive Lucien Febvre (henceforth EHESS-LF), “Carnet Brésil,” p. 3.

24 GF, Artigo 56, Gilberto Freyre, “O professor Febvre no Brasil,” O Cruzeiro, 10 Sept. 1949.

25 Freyre recalled this personal visit in an obituary of Febvre. GF, Artigo 472, “Mestre Lucien Febvre,” 19 Oct. 1957. Freyre was part of a UNESCO-organized conference in July 1948 on Tensions Affecting International Understanding, Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors (1915–1955) 34/3 (1948), 546–9Google Scholar.

26 GF, Lucien Febvre to Gilberto Freyre, São Paulo, 16 Sept. 1949.

27 A detailed itinerary can be found at EHESS-LF, “Carnet Brésil.” Febvre's trip seems to have lasted from mid-July through early October of 1949. In Rio, Febvre had on his agenda “Ministre de l’Éducation,” “Itamaraty,” and lectures at the “Ecole de Guerre” and the “Faculté de Lettres”; among his more informal commitments were meetings with the conservative editor Federico Augusto Schmidt and the scientists Carlos Chagas and Olympio da Fonseca Filho. Febvre also attended Albert Camus's lecture in Rio, and met with Gabrielle Mineur from the French Foreign Service. Febvre, “Carnet Brésil,” 3–4. For more on the lecture cycles sponsored by the French Foreign Service during this period see Suppo, Hugo Rogélio, La Politique Culturelle Française au Brésil entre les Années 1920–1950 (Lille, 1999), 948–63Google Scholar.

28 GF, Lucien Febvre to Gilberto Freyre, Rio de Janeiro, 18 Sept. 1949. “Pernambucan” means from the state of Pernambuco, of which Recife is capital.

29 From the 1980s onward, even when drawing on Freyre, historians of slavery such as Robert Slenes, Maria Helena Machado, Sidney Chalhoub, and Celia Marinho criticized his treatment of slave agency. I thank Flávio Gomes for sharing these historiographical references.

30 Bumba-meu-boi is a folk theatrical tradition most associated with Brazil's north and northeast, especially the state of Maranhão. The religious and cultural content varies regionally, but all bumba-meu-boi are based around the figure of the boi or cow and share brincantes—music, dance, song, and theater as fundamental aspects. Centro Nacional de Folclore et Cultura Popular, at www.cnfcp.gov.br/interna.php?ID_Secao=103, accessed 16 March 2018.

31 GF, Lucien Febvre to Gilberto Freyre, Rio de Janeiro, 18 Sept. 1949.

32 Institut mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC), BST1.C1.02, Lucien Febvre to Roger Bastide, Paris, 10 Oct. 1950.

33 For more on the intellectual currents shared between Freyre and the Annales see Burke, “Gilberto Freyre e a nova história.”

34 GF, Georges Gurvitch to “Mon Cher Ami,” Gilberto Freyre, Paris, 1 June 1952.

35 Febvre's notes for writing are incomplete in his archive, but there are certain passages, such as his notes on “La Question sexe” (the sexual question) in which Febvre is a bit more critical. As just one example, it is worth noting his citation of the extreme presence of syphilis in colonial Brazil. Febvre wrote, “Le Brésil s'est syphilisé avant de se civiliser” (“Brazil was siphilized before it was civilized”), citing his edition of Maîtres et esclaves, 85. EHESS-LF, “Gilberto Freyre” envelope.

36 Febvre, Gilberto, “Préface: Brésil, terre d'histoire,” Maître et esclaves (Paris, 1952), 13–14Google Scholar.

37 Ibid., 11, 13. “la poitrine forte, comme prête à sauter par-dessus les dentelles” (“a strong chest, as if ready to spill over the lace”); “Bien faite, robuste, propre, saine encore et neuve d'instincts. Sans pudeur importune. Toute nue” (“well endowed, robust, clean, still healthy and instinctually new. Without bothersome reserve. Completely nude”). For a different, less edited version of the first phrase: “leurs gros seins, ayant l'air de vouloir sortir par dessus les dentelles du camisole” (“their big breasts, seeming as though ready to jump over the laces of the camisole”). EHESS-LF, “Gilberto Freyre” envelope, 96.

38 Febvre, “Préface: Brésil, terre d'histoire,” 15.

39 Ibid., 17.

40 Ibid., 17.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 18.

43 Ibid., 19–20.

44 Lucien Febvre and François Crouzet, Nous sommes des sang-mêlés: Manuel d'histoire de la civilization française, presentation de Denis et Élisabeth Crouzet (Paris, 2012).

45 According to Febvre, Freyre requested him to write it. Febvre, Lucien, “Un grand livre sur le Brésil,” Annales: Économies, histoire, sciences sociales 8/3 (1953), 409–10, at 409CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Perhaps no one was more satisfied than Bastide himself, who thanked Febvre for his preface. Whether for stylistic or political reasons, Bastide evoked his “trembling” while translating. Bastide continued that his “patient work” had paid off, as it allowed Febvre to write his “magnificent text.” EHESS-LF, Bastide to Febvre, Paris, 20 Dec. 1952.

46 GF, Georges Gurvitch to Gilberto Freyre, Paris, 9 June 1941? Although this letter has no year (except for the one guessed by GF), I suppose that it is from 1948, as Gurvitch mentions Dr. [Otto] Klineberg. Presumably Freyre and Gurvitch met at the conference on Tensions Affecting International Understanding. This is confirmed by Bastide's archive. IMEC, BST2.C1.02, Gurvitch to Bastide, Paris, 16 Nov. 1948.

47 GF, Gurvitch to Freyre, Paris, 19 Jan. 1952.

48 The book was Freyre, Gilberto, Um brasileiro em terras portuguêsas: Introdução a uma possível luso-tropicologia, acompanhada de conferências e discursos proferidos em Portugal e em terras lusitanas e ex-lusitanas da Ásia, África, e do Atlântico (Rio de Janeiro, 1953)Google Scholar.

49 GF, Georges Gurvitch to “Chers Amis,” the Freyres, Paris, 2 Jan. 1953, original emphasis. Gurvitch, addressing “todos os freyres,” indicated a heightened familiarity with the family. Cahiers’s review only appeared in number 16, and was written not by Gurvitch but by Georges Balandier. Balandier, Georges, review of Maîtres et esclaves, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie 16 (Jan.–June 1954), 183–5Google Scholar.

50 For more on these reviews see Leenhardt, Jacques, “A consagração na França de um pensamento heterodoxo,” in Dimas, Antônio, Leenhardt, Jacques, and Pesavento, Sandra Jatahy, eds., Reinventar o Brasil: Gilberto Freyre entre história e ficção (Porto Alegre, 2006), 25–40Google Scholar.

51 GF, Roger Bastide to “Cher Monsieur,” Gilberto Freyre, São Paulo, 7 Sept. 1953.

52 Ibid.

53 Bastide had important reservations about Freyre's work, dating back to the 1940s when Freyre's regionalism, Bastide feared, might tend towards right-wing interpretations as regionalism had in France during Vichy. GF, Bastide to Freyre, São Paulo, 10 June 1941. Freyre's fascination with right-wing author Charles Maurras is analyzed in Motta, Roberto, “Élide, Gilberto, Imagismo, e Lingua de Universidade,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 24/69 (2009), 152, 154–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 GF, Lucien Febvre to Gilberto Freyre, Paris, 6 Nov. 1952. The other non-French member was historian Armando Sapori. I thank Brigitte Mazon for clarifying this point.

55 Marco Chor Maio, “A História do projeto UNESCO: estudos raciais e Ciências Sociais no Brasil” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, IUPERJ, Rio de Janeiro, 1997), is by far the most comprehensive source on this topic. A more recent conference on the project's fifty-year anniversary updated and expanded upon Maio's findings. Pereira, Claúdio and Sansone, Livio, eds., Projeto UNESCO no Brasil: Textos Críticos (Salvador, 2007)Google Scholar. Here I emphasize the French elements of a project that is largely seen as one of American anthropology. “UNESCO Project,” as it has become commonly known, does not mean that UNESCO was the primary initiator of these kinds of studies, nor its only source of funding; however, UNESCO's role as a centralizing organization and publisher of various projects, including those already being conducted in São Paulo under the banner of Anhembi and USP and those between the Programa de Pesquisas Sociais do Estado da Bahia and Columbia University, is irrefutable. Antonio Sérgio Alfredo Guimarães, “O Projeto UNESCO na Bahia,” in Pereira and Sansone, Projeto UNESCO no Brasil, 1–26, at 25.

56 For more on these statements and their internal tensions see Maio, Marco Chor and Santos, Ricardo Ventura, “Antiracism and the Uses of Science in the Post-World War II: An Analysis of UNESCO'S First Statements on Race (1950 and 1951),” Vibrant 12/2 (2015), 1–26Google Scholar. See also Brattain, Michelle, “Race, Racism, and Antiracism: UNESCO and the Politics of Presenting Science to the Postwar Public,” American Historical Review 112/5 (2007), 1386–1413CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Maio, Marco Chor, “O projeto UNESCO e a agenda das ciências sociais no Brasil dos anos 40 e 50,” Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 41/14 (2000), 141–58, at 142–3, 156Google Scholar. Ramos's text, Racial Mixing in Brazil, largely confirmed UNESCO's first statement on race, which suggested that there were no fundamental biological differences between peoples. “The experience of “racial mixing” in the tropics,” he wrote, “did not reveal any disadvantage as far as the mixture of races.” Ramos, Arthur, Le métissage au Brésil (Paris, 1952), 4Google Scholar.

58 For Métraux's initials statement on the “racial problem” see Métraux, Alfred, “UNESCO and the racial problem,” International Social Science Bulletin 2/3 (1950), 384–90Google Scholar.

59 Métraux, Alfred, “An Inquiry into Race Relations in Brazil,” UNESCO Courier 5/8–9 (1952), 6Google Scholar.

60 Lorenzo Macagno analyzes the “lusotropicalist” aspects of Métraux in his article “Alfred Métraux: antropologia aplicada e lusotropicalismo,” Etnográfica 17/2 (2013), esp. 225–31Google Scholar.

61 Métraux, Alfred, “Brazil: A Land of Harmony for All Races?”, UNESCO Courier 4/4 (April 1951), 3Google Scholar. Métraux offered to have Freyre's Casa-Grande & Senzala translated into English while he was working at Yale, but does not seem to have found a satisfying translator. GF, Métraux to Freyre, New Haven, 3 June 1941. During the war, while giving lectures on Latin American history and culture, he understood Brazil to have a “lack of racial prejudice … as we understand them in the United States. Mulattoes were and are more than ever slowly absorbed into the white groups and the Negroes into the mulatto population.” Archives du Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale (henceforth LAS), FAM.AS.E.01.01.03, “Notes de cours sur les discriminations selon les critères de race et de classe sociale dans divers pays de l'Amérique du sud,” 1.

62 GF, Artigo 191, Freyre, “Mestre Metraux confirma,” 5 April 1952.

63 Métraux, “An Inquiry into Race Relations in Brazil,” 6.

64 LAS, FAM.H.MT.01.23, “Carnet n: 87,” Thursday, 30 Nov. 1950.

65 GF, Métraux to Freyre, Paris, 22 Aug. 1951.

66 GF, Métraux to Freyre, Paris, 31 March 1952.

67 GF, Métraux to Freyre, Paris, 11 April 1952.

68 Dávila, Hotel Trópico, 11–26.

69 Freyre, Gilberto, “The Negro's Role in Brazilian History,” UNESCO Courier, 5/8–9 (1952), 7–8Google Scholar.

70 Ibid., 8.

71 Here I appropriate Meucci's term to express the increasing distance between Freyre and the Paulista school of sociology.

72 Bastide, Roger, “São Paulo: The Octopus Town,” UNESCO Courier 5/8–9 (1952), 9Google Scholar.

73 Ibid.

74 The text in question is Gilberto Freyre, “Uma interpretação de São Paulo,” Diário de São Paulo (Edição Comemorativa), 25 Jan. 1954, Cad. 3, 13– 15. For a longer discussion see Weinstein, Barbara, The Color of Modernity: São Paulo and the Making of Race and Nation in Brazil (Durham, NC, 2015), 283Google Scholar.

75 This study has become a classic in Brazilian social-science literature. For this reason, whether in texts about Fernandes, the UNESCO project, or the book Relações entre Negros e Brancos em São Paulo specifically, analyses of it abound. For a recent example see Soares, Eliane Veras, de Santana Braga, Maria Lúcia, and Costa, Diogo Valença de A., “O dilema racial brasileiro: de Roger Bastide a Florestan Fernandes ou da explicação teórica à proposição política,” Sociedade e Cultura 5/1 (2002), 35–52Google Scholar. Here I limit myself to its direct criticisms of Freyre and claims about “racial democracy.” For a historical and empirical critique of Fernandes see Andrews, George Reid, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1988 (Madison, 1991), esp. 71–81Google Scholar.

76 Guimarães, “O Projeto UNESCO na Bahia,” 32–3.

77 Florestan Fernandes, “I: Do Escravo ao Cidadão,” Anhembi 10 (Ano III, Numero 30) (1953), 435–90, at 440, 484.

78 Ibid., 473.

79 Ibid., 476.

80 Ibid., 480.

81 Fernandes, Florestan, “II: Cor e Estrutura Social em Mudança,” Anhembi 11 (Ano III, Numero 31) (1953), 14–69, at 14Google Scholar. “If the slave was indigenous, African, black Brazilian, a dark mulatto or a light mulatto, it was of little significance.” For more on class versus race in Fernandes see Maio, Marco Chor and Galli, Rosemary, “Florestan Fernandes, Oracy Nogueira, and the UNESCO Project on Race Relations in São Paulo,” Latin American Perspectives 38/3 (May 2011), 140Google Scholar.

82 Fernandes, “II: Cor e Estrutura Social em Mudança,” 18.

83 Ibid., 20.

84 Ibid., 48.

85 Ibid., 62.

86 Bastide, Roger, “III: Manifestações do Preconceito de Cor,” Anhembi 11 (Ano III, Numero 32) (1953), 242–77Google Scholar. Bastide's lengthy correspondence with Fernandes is found at Fundo Florestan Fernandes at the Universidade Federal de São Carlos (henceforth UFSCar-FF). Unfortunately, at Bastide's archive in France (IMEC), there is only one letter from Fernandes from 1971.

87 Bastide, “III: Manifestações do Preconceito de Cor,” 243.

88 Ibid., 251.

89 UFSCar-FF 002654.02.09.2016, Bastide to Fernandes, Paris, 4 March 1952, 1.

90 Ibid., 2.

91 Ibid.

92 UFSCar-FF. 00265302.09.2015, Bastide to Fernandes, Paris, 18 March 1952.

93 Think Marx's Lumpenproletariat.

94 Bastide, “III: Manifestações do Preconceito de Cor,” 253.

95 Ibid., 257.

96 Ibid., 242. This often-cited occurrence is analyzed in Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, 184; Alberto, Terms of Inclusion, 175–6.

97 Ibid., 260.

98 For more on this see Alberto, especially chap. 1, 23–68.

99 For Bastide's analysis of the Teatro Experimental Negro see Bastide, Roger, “A propósito do teatro experimental negro,” Anhembi 3/9 (1951), 541–4Google Scholar.

100 See, for example, Ramos, Arthur, “Foreign Research on Brazilian Blacks,” Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology 7/1 (2010)Google Scholar, at www.vibrant.org.br/issues/v7n1/artur-ramos-foreign-research-on-brazilianblacks. For an eloquent questioning of the “problem,” even if two decades later, see Alberto, Paulina L., “When Rio Was Black: Soul Music, National Culture, and the Politics of Racial Comparison in 1970s Brazil,” Hispanic American Historical Review 89/1 (2009), 3–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Bastide, “III: Manifestações do Preconceito de Cor,” 269. Morena is an inherently untranslatable word, particularly because it is regionally specific. It can be read as either a brunet(te) or “a person with tan or light brown skin.” Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, 264.

102 For more on this see Conklin, Alice, In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950 (Ithaca, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 For more on this, see Fernandes, Florestan, A integração do negro na sociedade de classes, vol. 1 (Rio de Janeiro, 2008)Google Scholar. For an English version see Fernandes, , The Negro in Brazilian Society (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

104 By this point, Freyre increasingly defined himself as a writer rather than a pure sociologist, partially as a way of distinguishing himself from the younger generation of university-trained and affiliated sociologists, such as Fernandes. See Freyre, Gilberto, Como e por que sou e não sou sociológo (Brasília, 1968)Google Scholar.

105 That said, these criticisms did not prevent the two from maintaining a collegial and even friendly relationship. After Freyre had hosted Fernandes at his home in Recife, however, the latter's thank you letter demonstrates the tension between the two. Fernandes wrote of their entendimento franco (frank understanding)—in Brazil, where arguments often take the form of accommodation rather than direct challenge, this language is strong. GF, Fernandes to Freyre, São Paulo, 7 April 1961.

106 Nordeste was translated by Orecchioni, Jean as Terres du Sucre (Paris, 1956)Google Scholar. Freyre later claimed to have preferred Orecchioni's translation because of his attentiveness to Freyre's style. This question has analyzed in Ria LeMaire, “Amores inteligentes,” in Dimas, Leenhardt, and Pesavento, Reinventar o Brasil, 91–5.

107 Freyre himself always insisted that his pathbreaking approach was the most important aspect of his reception in France—much more than some kind of curiosity about Brazil. GF, Artigo 443; Gilberto Freyre, “Na Sorbonne e no castelo de Cerisy,” O Cruzeiro, 9 March 1957. See also, GF, Artigo 444, Freyre, “Ainda sobre o Seminário de Cerisy,” O Cruzeiro, March 16, 1957. Many of those who study Freyre are sympathetic to him and emphasize the “universal” characteristics of his work, repeating his claims. Pallares-Burke and Burke, Gilberto Freyre, importantly reconstruct the international network of which Freyre was part, relativize one universal (notably that of the Annales and of French social science), and, in turn, universalize a Brazilian social scientists's thought in unprecedented ways; nonetheless, they resuscitate Freyre for his “theory,” downplaying the very real historiographical problems with its content.

108 Connelly, Matthew, A Diplomatic Revolution: Algeria's Fight for Independence and the Origins of the Post-Cold War Era (Oxford, 2002), 69–116Google Scholar.

109 GF, Pasta FR 1956: Colóquio de CERISY.

110 GF, Artigo 444, Gilberto Freyre, “Ainda sobre o Seminário de Cerisy,” O Cruzeiro, 16 March 1957.

111 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, Race and History (Paris, 1952), 21Google Scholar. Later in this essay, he noted that “the historical concomitant of technical progress has been the development of the exploitation of man by man.” Ibid., 47.

112 Ibid., 26–7.

113 Ibid., 45.

114 My goal here is not to denigrate Lévi-Strauss as a racial purist, which he never was. It is instead to suggest another possible reason why he and Freyre disagreed.

115 Freyre, “The Negro's Role in Brazilian History,” 8.

116 For more on the literary elements in Lévi-Strauss's writing and French anthropology more generally see Debaene, Vincent, Far Afield: French Anthropology between Science and Literature (Chicago, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117 Caillois's criticism of Race et histoire and Lévi-Strauss's response have been thoroughly analyzed in the secondary literature. Wilcken, Patrick, Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (London and New York, 2010), 191–3Google Scholar. The original citations are Callois, Roger, “Illusion à rebours,” Nouvelle revue française 24 (Dec. 1954), 1010–24, 25 (Jan. 1955), 58–70Google Scholar. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, “Diogène couché” Les temps modernes 10/110 (1955), 1218–19Google Scholar. Callois's correspondence with Freyre is found in GF.

118 Among the original signatories were, in addition to Lévi-Strauss, Gurvitch and Leiris, Paul Ricoeur, François Mauriac, André Breton, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marguerite Duras, Henri Lefevre, Jean Cocteau, and others. For more on this see Le Sueur, James D., “Decolonizing ‘French Universalism’: Reconsidering the Impact of the Algerian War on French intellectuals,” in Le Sueur, James D., ed., The Decolonization Reader (New York: Routledge, 2003), 101–17, at 107–9, 105Google Scholar. Gurvitch's presence is, to a certain extent, a mystery, but suffice it to say that, being naturalized rather than born French, his loyalties toward empire were less visceral.

119 Emmanuelle Loyer treats this correspondence in her biography. Loyer, Emmanuelle, Claude Lévi-Strauss (Paris, 2015), 593–4Google Scholar.

120 Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Manuscrits, NAF 28150 (202), Jacques Soustelle to “Mon Cher Ami,” Algiers, 14 Nov. 1955.

121 BnF Manuscrits, NAF 28150 (202), Lévi-Strauss to “Mon cher Soustelle,” Paris, 21 Nov. 1955.

122 Ibid. This attitude seems to have colored most of the rest of Lévi-Strauss's life, with many leftist intellectuals criticizing him for his aloofness and obsession with myth and philosophy. According to Monique Lévi-Strauss, this had more to do with him feeling like it was not his “place”; even if he read several newspapers a day and followed politics closely, he rarely took positions publicly. Interview with Monique Lévi-Strauss, Paris, 7 Nov. 2015.

123 BnF Manuscrits, NAF 28150 (202), Lévi-Strauss to “Mon cher Soustelle,” Paris, 1 Dec. 1956. This must have been Soustelle, Jacques, Aimée et souffrante Algérie (Paris, 1956)Google Scholar.

124 BnF Manuscrits, NAF 28150 (202), Lévi-Strauss to “Mon cher Soustelle,” Paris, 1 Dec. 1956.

125 Ibid.

126 Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Socialisme et la colonisation” (1928), cited in Loyer, Lévi-Strauss, 114.

127 For more on this project see Jeffrey James Byrne, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford, 2016).

128 For two poignant analyses see Shepard, Todd, “Thinking between Metropole and Colony: The French Republic, ‘Exceptional Promotion’, and the ‘Integration’ of Algerians, 1955–1962,” in Thomas, Martin, ed., The French Colonial Mind (Lincoln, 2011), 298–323Google Scholar. Davis, Muriam Haleh, “‘The Transformation of Man’ in French Algeria: Economic Planning and the Postwar Social Sciences, 1958–62,” Journal of Contemporary History 52/1 (2017), 73–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

129 It may have been the case that he was requested not to go by the Brazilian government.

130 GF, Artigo 837; Gilberto Freyre, “Nós e a França,” O Cruzeiro, 19 Nov. 1966.

131 The quote is cited in Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation, 262. For more on Fanon and négritude see Wilder, Freedom Time, 134–5.

132 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, “Roger Bastide, sourcier et sorcier de la négritude,” in Poirier, Jean and Raveau, François, eds., L'autre et l'ailleurs: Hommage à Roger Bastide (Nice, 1976), 97–9, at 97Google Scholar.

133 Bastide, Roger, “Chronique des livres de sociologie brésilienne,” Revue internationale de sociologie 47/1–2 (1939), 91–8, at 91Google Scholar.