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Casa-Grande e Senzala (English: The Masters and the Slaves) is a book published in 1933 by Gilberto Freyre, about the formation of Brazilian society. The casa-grande ("big house") refers to the slave owner's residence on a sugarcane plantation, where whole towns were owned and managed by one man. The Senzala ("slave quarters") refers to the dwellings of the black working class, where they originally worked as slaves, and later as servants.[1][2][3][4]
 | |
| Author | Gilberto Freyre |
|---|---|
| Subject | Non-fiction |
| Genre | Brazil |
Publication date | 1933 |
| Publication place | Brazil |
The book deals with race/class separation and miscegenation and is generally considered a classic of modern cultural anthropology. In Freyre's opinion, the hierarchy imposed by those in the Casa-Grande was an expression of a patriarchal society. In this book the author refutes the idea that Brazilians were an "inferior race" because of race-mixing. He points to the positive elements that permeated Brazilian culture because of miscegenation (especially among the Portuguese, Indians, and Africans). Portugal, like Brazil, is described as being culturally and racially influenced by "an energetic infusion of Moorish and Negro blood, the effects of which persist to this day in the Portuguese people and the Portuguese character".[5][6] The book has been criticized in recent years for downplaying the brutality of colonialism in Brazil and instead celebrating the hybridity which is indirectly a product of violence against Black and Indigenous people in the country.[7][8]
References
edit- ^ Barickman, B. J. (2004). "Revisiting the Casa-grande: Plantation and Cane-Farming Households in Early Nineteenth-Century Bahia". Hispanic American Historical Review. 84 (4): 619–659. doi:10.1215/00182168-84-4-619. S2CID 145110017. Project MUSE 174662.
- ^ Diffie, Bailey W. (1946). "Review of The Masters and the Slaves [Casa-Grande & Senzala]: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization". The Hispanic American Historical Review. 26 (4): 497–499. doi:10.2307/2507653. JSTOR 2507653.
- ^ Veracini, Lorenzo (February 2010). "Review of Isfahani-Hammond, Alexandra, White Negritude: Race, Writing, and Brazilian Cultural Identity".
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ Lehmann, David (January 2008). "GILBERTO FREYRE". Latin American Research Review. 43 (1): 208. doi:10.1353/lar.2008.0002. S2CID 143498186.
- ^ Juan E. De Castro, Mestizo Nations: Culture, Race, and Conformity in Latin American Literature, University of Arizona Press, 2002, p.68
- ^ Gilberto Freyre, Casa-grande E Senzala, 1933, p. 211
- ^ Davis, Darién J (2018). "From Oppressive to Benign: A Comparative History of the Construction of Whiteness in Brazil in the Post Abolition Era". TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World. 8 (2). doi:10.5070/T482041112. ISSN 2154-1361.
- ^ "The State of Indian Exorcism", Racial Revolutions, Duke University Press, pp. 54–92, 2001, doi:10.1215/9780822381303-004, ISBN 978-0-8223-2731-8, retrieved 2024-11-11