LANGSTON HUGHES, LIMA BARRETO E A INALCANÇÁVEL MODERNIDADE

A SEGREGAÇÃO RACIAL NOS ESTADOS UNIDOS E A EUGENIA NO BRASIL NO INÍCIO DO SÉCULO XX

Abstract

This paper analyzes the short story "Poor Little Black Fellow" by the American black writer Langston Hughes (1901-1967) in comparison with the short stories "Teorias do Dr. Caruru" and "Agaricus auditae" by the Brazilian black author Lima Barreto (1881-1922). I aim to demonstrate how both writers deconstructed the hegemonic principle of "modernity" in the early twentieth century. On the one hand, Langston Hughes unveiled the racist fallacy of the "American Dream." On the other hand, Lima Barreto questioned eugenics and denounced racism in the First Republic in Brazil. Based on this, I interweave the themes of American racial segregation and the eugenic ideas prevailing in Brazil at the time to demonstrate how black writing was able to elaborate a counter-discourse of modernity, dismantling the hegemonic notion of "progress" and "civilization." Hence, I argue that "modernity" in the first decades of the 20th century was a white experience. The theoretical perspective of this reflection assumes that the Western world was shaped by the logic of coloniality, as suggested by Walter Mignolo (2017). Also, it considers that there is a "racial contract" in these societies in the definition of the Jamaican philosopher Charles Mills (1997). With a decolonial approach, the article also draws on the Caribbean intellectual tradition, such as Aimé Césaire (1978) and Frantz Fanon (2008), as well as on the studies on the Other by Gayatri Spivak (2010), Achille Mbembe (2014) and Grada Kilomba (2019).