Os arquivos do século XIX como possibilidade de “enxergar antigamentes”: Educação de surdos no Brasil Imperial

Abstract

It is generally accepted that deaf education in Brazil began in the second half of the 19th century, with the arrival of Edouard Huet and the creation of the current National Institute of Deaf Education (INES) in 1856. Research prior to this period that considers Brazil as a focus is practically nonexistent. In this way, I wish to contribute to the history of deaf education by looking at a period of time that remains silent (in relation to everything that has been said), but which has many voices when examined with greater care, with the objective of understanding the discursive practices of Brazilian society in the first half of the 19th century, the production of social norms that permeated deaf lives and their possibilities of existence. Thus, understanding the norms that circulated in Imperial Brazil during this period (1801-1850) and seeking to scrutinize the motivations that made the creation of INES possible in 1856 is the ‘journey’ contained in this investigation. The research is characterized, in its classification, as historical-documentary, descriptive and of a qualitative nature. The primary sources raised were treated from a Foucaultian inspiration with the literary intercession of Manoel de Barros as a possibility of fictionalizing reality and the materiality of the data. The narrative constructed in this analysis can be understood through the invention of four fields of knowledge about deafness: Literary, Legislative, Imperial and Medical. Within this framework, the thesis of this study points to the idea that the creation of the current INES was made possible due to the constitutions of imaginaries that circulated at this historical moment, within these fields, making it possible to inscribe deafness in the social norms of their time. The conclusions highlight that deafness came to exist in the documentary lines from a mutual game between such norm-making institutions that, in the course of the readings, appear to provide support for the construction of a deafness device, conditioning and directing the possibilities of deaf lives at this historical moment.