"Quando ensaiamos lutar”: mulheres letradas, imprensa e feminismos em Maceió-AL (1887-1903)

Abstract

In this work, I present an analysis of some women's and feminist newspapers from Alagoas, a type of press in this state, whose ownership dates back to the end of the 1860s. Among these sources, in printed newspaper format, greater attention was paid to the three newspapers that highlighted the political action of literate women in the periodical press of the capital, Maceió, (Revista Alagoana, 1887; O Feminista, 1902; Rosal, 1903). They were responsible for promoting “feminist consciousness” in the city (Gerda Lerner, 2022). In Alagoas, the systematic erasure of memories related to women's actions is a reality shared with other states in the country, however, regarding the recovery of their stories, little has been done here (Izabel Brandão; Ivia Alves, 2002). Facing the political invisibility that was bequeathed to them and the few bibliographical references on the subject, this research historicizes female and feminist journalism through the use of feminist criticism and the analytical-interpretive categories of sex, class, race and gender (Lélia Gonzalez, 2022; Kimberlé Crenshaw, 2020; Cecília Sardenberg, 2007; Donna Haraway, 1995; Angela Davis, 2016), as well as seeking to capture the “silences” that constitute and reveal the materiality of power over the bodies of subjects in Alagoas (Eni Orlandi, 2007; Michel Foucault, 1984). With this in mind, it was interesting to map the main demands made by these women and the assessment they made of their own social condition, permeated by discourses that signal capitalist Modernity, the feminization of culture and the transformation of rural space into an urban environment (Yuderkys Minõso, 2020; Durval Albuquerque Jr., 2013; Arrisete Costa, 2015). Since the last decades of the last century, there has been a growing publication of research in Brazil that focuses on women's history, which reveals the attempt to rescue their memories, but also the political use of the past to contest gender inequalities and their consequences. precarious intertwining of female identities in the present time (Margareth Rago, 1995; Rachel Soihet; Joana Maria Pedro, 2007).