History textbooks, racism and the critique of Eurocentrism: beyond rectification or compensation

• Autor(a) principal: Araújo, Marta
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: Rodríguez Maeso, Silvia
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/42626; https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2011.600767
• topic: Eurocentrism; Race; Racism; Portugal; Education; History textbooks

This article is based on the theoretical framework developed within a research project on the construction of Eurocentrism and, more specifically, on the analysis of Portuguese history textbooks. We propose that the textbooks’ master narrative constitutes a power-evasive discourse on history, which naturalizes core processes such as colonialism, slavery and racism. Showing the limits of an approach that merely proposes the compensation or rectification of (mis)representations, we argue for the need to unbind the debate on Eurocentrism from a perspective that fails to make problematic the ‘very idea of Europe’. Accordingly, our analysis of Portuguese history textbooks focuses on three core narrative devices: (1) the chronopolitics of representation; (2) the paradigm of the (democratic) national state; and (3) the definitive bond between concepts and historical processes.