The personal archive of professor Pórcia Guimarães Alves (1917-2005): a support for self-writing

Abstract

The cultural practice of composing a personal archive can be demarcated from the eighteenth century, derived from the relationship that the modern individual established with his documents and the production of a memory of himself. These actions extended during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but were impacted by changes in the production of media for such activity, changes in the communication sector and the expansion of reading and writing practice. Born in the early twentieth century, Professor Pórcia Guimarães Alves had a vast archive - containing documents forged in the public spaces where she attended and others produced in her private environment - whose composition served as material support for a writing of the teacher. In this way, the article sought to answer: What is the self-writing, given to read, that the ordering and content of the personal archive of Professor Pórcia Guimarães Alves (1917-2005) provides? The article aimed to analyze the self-writing expressed in the personal archive of Pórcia Guimarães Alves (1917-2005), and delimited the specific objectives in: describing some aspects and content of the teacher's file; look for possible logics from the teacher for the ordering of material stored in your file; and systematize his personal archive, seeking the writing of himself contained therein. The documentary research had the theoretical-methodological framework of Gomes (2004); and  Artières (1998). The results lead one to believe that, in the process of constitution of the personal archive, the teacher elaborated a representation of itself and constituted its identity.