The Sacrificed Tomorrow at the University, on its Almost Centenary

Abstract

The paper opens (and closes) itself with scenes of the university life at USP, seeking to highlight a certain cycle of rewriting history as its own palimpsest, seeking to compromise the critical revision of its narrative, focused on the efforts of its founders and the maintenance of their memories and legacies. In order to describe in more detail how the relationship with the eugenics movement has been erased from USP’s historiography, the opening scene then gives way to the re-presentation of Fernando de Azevedo, one of the main names in the creation of USP, as well as re-reading one speech by Antonio Candido, who Azevedo mentored, trying to demonstrate how the erasure of racial issues (linked to the white supremacist movement, basis of eugenics) needs to be reviewed as foundational to a school of thought at USP, which also goes back to its dividends from Brazil’s slavery heritage.