I/WE

HISTORY AND AUTOETNOGRAPHY

Abstract

This is an account of a longitudinal research about the author's russian jewish family’s arrival to Brazilian territory. This arrival was carried out through a colonization program that installed the family in a rural area of the State of Rio Grande do Sul. This study consists of three large blocks. The first can be described as a macro-social level of the context in which the phenomena occurred, in Russia and Brazil; the second level stemmed from the reading of letters from Colony administrators dated to the beginning of the 20th century, read as being the present lived in the colony; the third level was the I/we level – because talking about family is always talking about “we”, and about that being a researcher and research participant at the same time revealed about the researcher and about her family's past experienced by her in the present. In this third level, the methodology was autoethnography, while in the previous levels it was about socio-familiar-historical research in documentary sources and interviews. It is a multiple and complex study that permeates many areas, but the main conclusion poses the issue of intersubjectivity seen through a historical inherence reflected in mirrors directed at various temporal dimensions. This occurred because, as a researcher, I saw myself as part and participant of the same story told in different ways. These mirrors reflected another that is me and launched the perception that, as a researcher, I am also narrated by the other.