MASSANGANA, BRAZIL: PROBLEMS IN PARADISE

Abstract The article proposes a new reading of “Massangana” by Joaquim Nabuco, from the perspective of a political sociology of the individual. The interpretation mobilizes elements of the cultural matrices with which the abolitionist’s memoirs dialogue, especially Christianity, to read them as a practice of subjectivation that intervenes in the realm of individual subjectivity as an arena of social conflict. In doing so, it contributes both to the critical reception of the white Brazilian elite author and to the availability of elements for the construction of a sociology of the individual in Brazil, by delineating processes of subjectivation and individuation which condition possibilities and limits to democratic citizenship contemporaneously.