Writing gestures in the diaries of Raymundo Faoro (Porto Alegre, 1943-1946)

Abstract

Raymundo Faoro (1925-2003), a Brazilian jurist, historian, and writer, is considered one of the most prominent social interpreters in twentieth century Brazil. While studying law in Porto Alegre, he wrote 20 volumes of diaries between 1943 and 1952, a total of almost 6.800 manuscript pages of wholly original content. The purpose of this article is to shed some light on the construction process of this archive, describing and analysing the author’s daily writing. I conceive of writing as a practice, consequently, I seek to examine the gestures in Raymundo’s writing from an ethnographic perspective, looking for motivations and meanings that presided over the course of his writing. Focusing on the first three volumes of the diaries (1943-1946), I concentrate on descriptions of the period in which the author experiences his first years living in Porto Alegre. I argue that besides presenting facts concerning Faoro’s intellectual formation, for the first time, these diaries reveal relevant cultural and social aspects of the period, providing some clues regarding the requisites of becoming an intellectual in twentieth century Porto Alegre and Brazil. In addition to studying diaries as a literary and intellectual genre, I aim to advance the terrain of the anthropological history of writing.