The ephemeral Barnabite mission in the sertão (hinterland) of Pernambuco (1903-1905)

ego-documents, religious writing an institutional memory

Abstract

The objective of this text is to interpret the Barnabite mission in Pernambuco through the writings produced by the religious (letters, reports, and chronicles), understood here as ego-documents (Artières, 1998), that is, records in which self-writing operates as an exercise in identity production. To this end, it mobilizes documents preserved in archives located in Brazil and Europe, in dialogue with references from cultural history (Chartier, 1990), archive criticism (Farge, 2009), and collective memory (Halbwachs, 1990). The interpretation suggests that religious writing not only recorded practices but also operated as a strategy of legitimation and a certain symbolic pedagogy. Considering the concept of self-writing, it is concluded that these writings functioned as devices for elaborating the missionary experience, through which a brief mission, marked by tensions, was re-signified as institutional learning and converted into legitimate memory of the order. The article thus highlights how ephemeral experiences can become places of memory and devices for forming collective identity.