Narrativas biográficas: a construção da identidade espírita no Brasil e sua fragmentação

Abstract

THE BIOGRAPHY of two Brazilian psychics - Spiritist channelers Chico Xavier and Luiz Antonio Gasparetto - is this essay's object of thought, a review of the relationships created by Spiritism in the Brazilian religious milieu, stressing in particular the dialogue with the country's hegemonic religion, Catholicism, and, more recently, with the universe of the so-called New Age. In the life history of the two mediums, Catholicism plays a central role: for Chico Xavier as a matrix to reinterpret the Spiritist doctrine; for Luiz Antonio Gasparetto, as an object of criticism. The two biographies, therefore, characterize distinct moments in the history of Spiritism in Brazil. At the same time, the simultaneous existence of both models evinces competing modes of their contemporary expression in Brazil.