Memory and archive: family photographs producing meanings on the feminine

Abstract

This article aims at discussing the role of memory and the constitution of the archive from the perspective of discourse, on the woman’s trajectory, from the 50’s to the 90’s. We interpreted some hints in family pictures, picked inside a private collection, belonging to a family from the interior of São Paulo, based on the works of Ginzburg, Pêcheux and Orlandi. There were sentences and inscriptions on the back of the chosen pictures, that motivated the analysis of the meanings built on the feminine, along three generations of grandmothers, mothers and daughters. They made us believe that the theory of discourse can offer a punctual contribution to the studies on the places where and the manners in which memory condenses and is materialized. The corpus of our analyses allows us to infer that there were meaning slidings in discourse and in the image of/about the woman, primarily linked to home and traditions; then, linked to the sky and the horizon, possible spaces of meaning and ways to break those meanings that tied her only to private life.