Darcy:

the biography of a public man (1962-1969)

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the political-intellectual trajectory of anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro (1922-1997) during the 1960s. The objective is to explain what were the elements mobilized by him, in order to build his image as a public man. For this, the chosen clipping covers the years from 1962-69, and the material analyzed were the texts "The Indigenist Policy" (1962) and "The Necessary University" (1969). The method used was the literature review guided by the concept of acclimatization proposed by Antonio Brasil Jr. (2013). With this, it was possible to cut out the works and decisive moments in this process, and as suggested by André Botelho (2019), to highlight the singularities in the relationship between State and society, based on the performance of Darcy Ribeiro. The hypothesis of this work is that Darcy Ribeiro used the positions of prestige and power he occupied to construct an apologetic biography, and thus justify the choices made in his political and academic career. Therefore, the selection of the aforementioned works is justified by the fact that they were written by Darcy Ribeiro as a result of political initiatives led by him. Therefore, they explain the key points of this process. They also elucidate the process of constructing Darcy Ribeiro's arguments in the light of the professional transitions he made, when he migrated from his occupations as an ethnologist in the Indian Protection Service (SPI), through educational initiatives in 1955-59, to the political positions of Minister of Education and Culture and Chief of Staff in 1962. The article concluded that the process of creating an idealized self-representation occurred through the elaboration and accumulation of documents undertaken by Darcy Ribeiro while he was still alive. To this end, in his texts there is a rhetoric of pioneering spirit, and commitment to the destiny of the Brazilian people, at the expense of a supposed cost of abandoning his strictly academic career, and not as a conscious choice he made. Therefore, Darcy Ribeiro's intention was to strengthen his image as a public man, pioneering and multifaceted and politically engaged.