Paper short abstract:

Drawing on four months of institutional ethnography at a Brazilian international university, the paper critically discusses the use of "history", more specifically the reference to the history of Trans-Atlantic slavery in Brazilian South-South Cooperation with African countries.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years Brazil has expanded international development cooperation in Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa emphasizing transatlantic slavery as a "shared history" to justify its engagements. Drawing on ethnographic research at the new federal University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (Unilab) and extensive document analysis, I found that discourses of "shared history" create an image of a supposedly dialogical and mutually beneficial relationship across a historically and developmentally homogenous community of Portuguese-speaking countries and people. The everyday making of the university, however, is shaped by competing and often contradictory interpretations of these discourses. Various groups of actors, who are positioned differently vis-á-vis the project, struggle against shifting yet dominating Brazil-centered conceptualizations of what constitutes a "shared history". The particular discursive construction allows the government to reimagine Brazil as a pluralistic nation-state, but constructs "Africa" as "historical other". This paper speaks to the overall panel because it shows how the Brazilian government dominates the interpretation of "history", which reduces "Africa" to an icon of Brazil's internal conflicts over state approaches to racialized inequalities, rather than to foster the kinds of dialogical relationships it claims to provide.