O balde, a vassoura e os projetos: uma análise da questão racial no campo da arquitetura no Maranhão

Abstract

The Brazilian academic production, in general, is affected by several factors related to its colonial past. Since the beginning of the Brazil’s conquest and colonization plan, the relations of power developed have outlined a process of subalternation, silencing and subordination, which would remain and reinstate even after the formal end of that period. The influence of diverse power structures arising from colonial relations was all over country. Therefore, colonization in Brazil comes to an end, but domination structures and international dependence are maintained. The definition of these international (European) standards as hegemonic models makes the nonhegemonic sciences dependent on this universal knowledge. Thus, methodologies, concepts, ideas, projects, and surveys are determined, oriented, and controlled based on the sciences of the dominant countries. Accordingly, this research was made from the analysis of the implications of colonialism and structural racism in the eurocentred conception of the way of making science, having as an empirical field the course of architecture and urbanism of the State University of Maranhão (UEMA) and as main objective to analyze the impacts of these historical processes in this field of knowledge. A historical contextualization on the origin of Eurocentrism and scientific racism is briefly developed, as well as the effects of colonialism into the history of architecture that by itself already configures a silencing history. Throughout this work the first curriculum framework of the first courses of architecture in Brazil are analyzed and subsequently the composition of the UEMA’s curriculum framework and in addition the racial analysis of the teacher’s framework. In the end, the data built on the process of implementing the course at UEMA and its current representations are analyzed, emphasizing the speech of students and teachers. This research, therefore, is centered on the concepts of Eurocentrism, colonialism (of power and knowledge) and structural racism starting from an approach based on decolonial authors and in the theoretical-methodological perspective of Pierre Bourdieu.