“Toda vida eu cresci, minha mãe sempre dizendo que nós era indígena”: estudo discursivo de narrativas de troncos velhos sobre a identidade cariri em Crato-CE

Abstract

Considering the historical path of the Cariri in Crato-CE from the installation of the Miranda’s Mission to the present day, our general objective is to understand the discursive constitution of the Cariri identity from the narratives of old trunks residing in the municipality of Crato-CE. To fulfill our purpose, we carried out narrative interviews with three old trunks of the Poço Dantas community, located in Crato-CE, limiting our corpus to statements that refer us to elements of ancestry and coloniality, analyzing and identifying the regularities and dispersions that organize the formation of the Cariri discourse. Therefore, we pursued the following specific objectives: 1. Investigate which elements characterize the wills to truth in tension that permeate the narratives of the old trunks residing in Crato. 2. Understand how the old Cariri trunks are subjectivated from the dominant and non-dominant discursive formations existing in the dispersion of the Cariri discourse. 3. Examine which relations of knowledge/power/truth that continue to be in conflict in the Cariri subject's discourse and how these relations contest the regime of truth of the dominant coloniality. We understand, then, the significance of our work by expanding the discussions of Discursive Studies, in dialogue with Cultural Studies in the decolonial perspective on the circulation, reproduction and modification of regimes of truth that sustain the constitution of the Cariri identity currently in the Cariri region of Ceará. Our theoretical foundations are based on Foucault's (1995, 1996, 2008 and 1998) understanding of discourse, linking it with the relations of knowledge/power/truth when dealing with forms of delimitation and control of discourses. The debate that will focus on the Cariri identity will be linked to the work from the discussion on history, memory and Cultural Studies present in Bosi (2006) and Hall (2006, 2014 and 2016). Regarding the trajectory of the Cariri up to the present, we are based on Batista, Florêncio and Nascimento (2022) and Melo (2020), further subsidized by the knowledge about the ancestral peoples in Brazil brought by Pãrõkumu and Kẽhrírio (1995) and Krenak (1992). This dialogue will be enriched by the decolonial prism when we bring the assumptions arising from the studies of Mignolo (2003), Quijano (2009) and Santos (2009). We hypothesized that the construction of the Cariri identity is influenced by discursive practices that incorporate ancestral, territorial, economic elements of subsistence and, above all, ancestral memory, indicating the continuous struggle in the face of his silencing resulting from the colonization process and its consequences. At the end of the process of writing this dissertation, our initial hypothesis was not refuted, but complemented, highlighting ancestral memory as a fundamental factor in the constitution and preservation of the Cariri identity. Furthermore, the research revealed that this ancestral identity develops in a context of tensions and contradictions, in which ancestral knowledge and dominant and subalternized discursive formations intertwine and confront each other, shaping the Cariri subject amidst asymmetrical power relations.