“O Negro André”: the racial issue in the life and work of the abolitionist André Rebouças

Abstract

The main objective of this work was to analyze how the context of racial relations influenced the construction of the self and the intellectual production of black intellectual and abolitionist André Rebouças. Through primary sources, it was possible to recreate the process of “self construction” lived by André Rebouças as a black man who had African ancestry. It was possible to notice that some characteristics of his social thought became radical at the same time the self-recognition of his racial condition became deeper, during the period in which he was self-exiled from Brazil, immediately after the proclamation of the republic in 1889. During his life in Africa, he broke his silence about his racial reality. In this period, the construction of his self goes through a transformation, as he begins to see himself and to reaffirm himself as a black and African man. This awaken to “racial consciousness” was interpreted, like Mattos suggested (2010), inspired by the concept of “double consciousness”, elaborated by Du Bois and further developed by Paul Gilroy in “The Black Atlantic” (2012).