Aspects of the "making history" and its practice in Ceará in the second half of the 19th century

Abstract

We start from the previous condition that the act resulting in the gesture of “making history” is mediated by its own productional techniques, organized according to the inherent aspects of a specific place and time. Depending on this place, methods are established, delineated interests and proposals are organized. And the time to be alluded here is that which occurs during the second half of the nineteenth century, a period that witnessed the "birth" of the historiography of Ceará, as defined by José Honório Rodrigues, and which will have with the foundation of the Instituto do Ceará in 1887 , the consolidation of a phase of "maturing" and of continuous and systematic historical research. And in the face of this juncture, from "birth" to "maturing", a considerable path was taken, in which the boundaries between literature and history, which were not yet clearly established, were defined, something that was made in the historical institution erected in 1887 like a shaping and authorizing condition. All this dynamic constituted the historical culture that was lived in this period, a dynamic culture, under construction and with constant re-significances. Thus, what we propose throughout the present text is to follow this path, seeking to perceive the actors inserted and acting in the context of this historical culture, in which the present and past relations, and the direct result of it, that is , the gesture of writing history, are constantly being discussed. And even in the face of diverse opinions and postures, of multiple paths, the trail traveled will always lead to the same place, since the writing (of history) poses something other than itself, namely the reality to which it refers.