Textual typology of Roquette-Pinto at the Museu Nacional

ABSTRACT

The article analyzes, through the study of the textual types used within the speech genre inventory and similar texts, the textual typology found in the Inventory of the Ethnology and Ethnography Sector of the Museu Nacional / UFRJ, during the reorganization carried out by Edgard Roquette-Pinto, at the beginning of the 20th century. The perspective between the Rondon Commission Collection and other texts by Roquette-Pinto is the corpus for understanding the modification of anthropology as a science in Brazil. When analyzing cataloging as a speech genre, changes in the descriptions of indigenous objects in collections and in ethnographic texts are examined. Using examples, the characteristics of the two simultaneous discourses conveyed by the texts are analyzed: that of science and that of the civilization of the indians. The first was descriptive and the second, narrative. These speeches could be intertwined according to the organization and its function in the texts. In the research it was also observed that the material culture of the indigenous people was not examined from the point of view of social relations of it’s producer, rather stages of civilizational evolution according to the scientific theories of that time.

KEYWORDS:
Edgard Roquette-Pinto; National Museum; Rondon Comission; Ethnography; Museological documentation; Collection