Configurando espaços e sujeitos: o sertão e o sertanejo nos escritos de Ademar Vidal (1940-1950)

Abstract

The study analyzes the folkloric production of Ademar Vidal, from Paraíba, and focuses, especially, on his writings from the 1940s and 1950s to problematize his elaboration of the sertão and sertanejo categories. As a starting point, it discusses his intellectual performance linked to institutions dedicated to cultural and literary studies on the identity of Paraíba, such as the Sociedade Paraibana de Folclore (SPF) and the Instituto Histórico Geográfico Paraibano (IHGP), in the 1940s. These insertions were important in the formulation of a discourse on characterizations of the people and the sertanejo space, listed in his work as elements that compose a Paraíba identity, based on three spatialities: coast, marsh or lowland, and sertão. The time frame is justified by the fact that it is the period of greatest circulation of his writing and the cultural research carried out through collaborators from the sertanejos of Paraíba, which were used as sources in the production of his work. In this sense, to map the studies carried out on the sertão and sertanejo of Paraíba, the documentary typology was the productions of his authorship, the unpublished available at IHGP, the bibliography and the correspondence sent to Luís da Câmara Cascudo, made available at the Instituto Câmara Cascudo (Ludovicus). In theoretical-methodological terms, a dialogue was made with the sertão category from Souza (2015), the history of historiography with Certeau (1982), and the concept of intellectual from Sirinelli (2003).