A vida emaranhada: a (re)materialização das ausências por meio dos objetos de família

Abstract

It is from a nightgown that belonged to my grandmother that this research was developed, weaven and became text. My big research question was: how are relationships developed and kept through [and with] things transmitted within familiar networks in which its belong? What makes us keep things we can no longer use? In the search for enlighten, at least in part, this questions, I did an ethnography with participant observation and observant participation inside my own familiar network, so that my interlocutors were: my mother and her sisters, my aunts. Through the fieldwork, the talks, the silences, ritual moments, is possible to realize that all of these women relates somehow with her things, especially the ones that were passed by those who doesn’t live anymore. This things and belongins can be defined as bearers of mana, ancestrality and belonging. They reserve powers, especially the capacity to invoke memories and narratives. These are, therefore, objects that bring life [and are brought to life through] to individual and family trajectories.