Abstract
This text, written in 2005, is Ricardo Benzaquen de Araújo's first research project on Joaquim Nabuco. Its importance lies in the transition he seeks to establish between his prior studies, which had focused mainly on authors of the Modernist generation, and the final three decades of the 19th century. The two periods are basically articulated by two strands: first, the thematic continuity of his discussion of the relation between subjectivity and of self-modelling in Guerra e paz: Casa-grande & senzala e a obra de Gilberto Freyre nos anos 30 [War and peace: the masters and the slaves and the work of Gilberto Freyre in the 1930s] and the context in which the author is referred; second, in dialogue with the Modernists and their acolytes, the relativization of the obsession with individual and national identity that poses, at once, a limitation to the interpretation of our social history and a problem for actions derived from it.
Keywords Ricardo Benzaquen de Araújo; Joaquim Nabuco; social thought in Brazil; identity; abolitionism