Brazil +500: backlands pasts on display in the nation’s “rediscovery exhibition”

Authors

  • Vagner Silva Ramos Filho UNICAMP

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59339/c.v13i25.745

Keywords:

Nation, Sertão, Cangaço, Memory, Uses of the past, Present time

Abstract

The monumental exhibition “Brazil +500: The Rediscovery Exhibition”, held in Brazil and other parts of the world between 2000 and 2002, was one of the main Brazilian institutional commemorations in the present time. This paper analyzes the exhibition as a device that produces ways of seeing and narrating the national past, problematizing the place of the rural territory known as the sertão within its imagination of the nation. To observe the lines of sedimentation and fracture in its operation, the analysis focuses on reinterpretations of events from the sertão that trace back to conflicts at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, such as the cangaço, whose memory is an integral part of the exhibition. Based on documentation compiled from the exhibition's own catalogs, this study aims to demonstrate how the disputes at play are not only about conflicting versions of the past in the present, but also about their legacies for the future in shaping the country’s self-image, constructed both for itself and for others.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Published

2026-04-17

How to Cite

Ramos Filho, V. S. (2026). Brazil +500: backlands pasts on display in the nation’s “rediscovery exhibition”. Clepsidra - Interdisciplinary Journal of Memory Studies, 13(25). https://doi.org/10.59339/c.v13i25.745