Abstract
In this article I propose an approach to Portuguese colonial anthropology that takes into account the debate on the African mentality, as a chapter in the broader debate on the “primitive mentality”, central in the first decades of the twentieth century for social anthropology, including for the Anthropology of the Negro in Brazil. The intention, defined, from the reading of fragments of anthropological production of the final phase of Portuguese colonialism, is to question this reciprocal determination in the colonial ideological fabric and in the fabric of anthropological theory for the idea of an African mentality. In other words, it asks how the anthropological practice in the colonial context of the 1950s and 1960s articulates with the anthropological theory about the African cultural difference, understood as possible to be described as “primitive”. In this sense, I discuss material found in colonial sources from the 50s and 60s of the twentieth century, to discuss the very idea of “African mentality” and the way it is present in anthropological theory, in colonial policies in Africa, and also in the formation of the Anthropological interest in black people in Brazil.
Keywords:
Portuguese Africa; Colonial Anthropology; “Primitive Mentality”; Anthropological Theory