Fight against Academic prejudice, Give visibility to Women philosopher's works, Discuss topics of Feminism and Gender And mainly do Philosophy Brazilian Network of Women Philosophers Gilda de Mello e Souza was born in 1919 and started at University of São Paulo (USP) in 1937, where she graduated in Philosophy in 1940. A decade later, Gilda defended her doctoral thesis under Roger Batisde’s supervision. That was something that few women would be able to do at that time.
In 1954, Gilda de Mello e Souza became the first women to be hired by the Department of Philosophy at USP twenty years after its foundation. The philosopher belongs to the generation that launched the journal called “Clima”, which inaugurated a modern style of art criticism in Brazil in the early 1940’s. Writers such as Antônio Cândido, Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes and Décio de Almeida Prado were part of it.
In the early 1970’s, Brazil was still under a civil-military dictatorship. Students and professors were persecuted and tortured by the government, endangering the existence of the department of Philosophy. Gilda defended the department and launched a new journal called “Discurso”, which is still running.
Gilda de Mello e Souza became an important scholar of the Modernist writer’s work Mário de Andrade, whom was her second-degree cousin. Sometimes, the writer visited the farm where Gilda spent her childhood in Araraquara, countryside of São Paulo. On those occasions, he guided her in learning writing skills.
According to the philosopher Otília Arantes, Gilda’s writing style is “unrepeatable”, which emphasizes the uniqueness of Gilda’s style. Gilda de Mello e Souza masterfully wrote not only about the author of “Macunaíma”, but also about other great works: Almeida Júnior's, Gregório Gruber's and João Câmara Filho's paintings; on Sara Carone's pottery; about Glauber Rocha's cinema, from the centrifugal rhythm of hope over the destiny of the country, under which the director composed “Black God, White Devil” to the centripetal desolation of “Entranced Earth”. Gilda de Mello e Souza's presence in the “Clima” journal, where the intellectual work was characterized by the appealing response to real things and events, can give us clues about her critical perspective.
According to philosopher Otília Arantes, Gilda de Mello e Souza exercised a careful and precise look, quote, “to the evidential decipherment of reality inscribed in the work”, end quote. That allowed Gilda to explain the originality of the artists whom faced the challenge of giving shape to Brazilian social experience. Gilda’s writing was never explicitly political.
However, the sharpness of her analysis allows us to observe society where a certain work appears. Since the aesthetic form and historical context seem to be articulated, there is no inconsistency for Gilda in carrying out a work that links aesthetic appreciation to social criticism. That was something she shared with her colleagues from the “Clima”.
They all had to compare and stress concepts supposedly universal with Brazilian figures and customs to be analyzed. However, unlike her male colleagues, Gilda de Mello e Souza faced many obstacles to become the intellectual she was. Gilda’s quest for recognition is expressed by the story of the publication of her best-known book, “The Soul of the Clothes”.
It was originally her doctoral theses, which was modestly published in the early 1950’s in “Revista do Museu Paulista”. There, her work remained almost inaccessible for decades. According to the entry dedicated to the author in the “Bank Itaú Art Cultural and Brazilian Culture” encyclopedia, we read the following: “A work dedicated to fashion and produced by an intellectual it is a subject considered to be futile and for women –, the thesis got comments from its time.
However, due to its originality and analytical character to apprehend feelings, ideas and social differences from clothes, the work gains prestige. It is reissued by Companhia das Letras in 1987, with changes and a new title - “The Spirit of Clothes: Fashion in the 19th Century”. As we can see, the second edition was published 37 years after the doctoral thesis had been written.
Only then, the work received the deserved recognition, which made it a reference for the study of fashion. Gilda approaches fashion from two angles: "fashion-art" ("modaearte"), which is an expression that combines color and movement, but it is historically rooted, as it materializes in a specific way in the bourgeois social context at a time when the distinction between social classes and gender can no more be determined by blood and nature. About 70 years after been written, this aesthetic sociology essay maintains its originality and boldness from which the author approached fashion.
Little by little, not only this work, but all of Gilda's works have received due attention her name has been gradually fixed in the history of Social Sciences and Philosophy in Brazil. Gilda moved through spaces forbidden to women. She harshly transgressed the imperatives of patriarchy.
She overflowed limits throughout her existence and we can say that the meaning of her work still unfolds before us. By been fascinated by the elegance and sharpness of her writings, we have discovered the negligence to which they were submitted due to the unfair drawing to which the author, as being a woman, was subjected. Like others from her time, Gilda de Mello e Souza lived the ambivalence of a difficult journey, where women, as anthropologist Heloísa Pontes says, quote, “experienced a transition of behavioral models by looking for new symbolic forms to express their femininity, while also by professionally launching themselves into careers seen as masculine.
For these reasons, they lived a moment that was simultaneously fertile and painful due to the social transition within the domain that today conventionally is called 'gender'”, end quote. A little more than a century after her birth, Gilda de Mello e Souza is an example that makes clear that the history of ideas and the history of philosophy are not a mere objective record of the zeitgeist. Specifically now when female philosophers are experiencing their Spring in the world and especially in Brazil.
Rather, this history is the construction of a narrative about a particular point of view. If today Gilda de Mello e Souza interests and fascinates us with what she lived and thought at her time, then this may show that the intellectual exercise is finally being conquered by dissonant figures and voices. By voices that aim to improvise a new narrative, contrary to the injustice and silences of the past.
Pictures by Gold above Blue Collection, Moreira Salles Institute, Guita and José Mindlin Brazilian Library, Décio de Almeida Prado's personal collection, Evandro Teixeira/JB Agency/Dedoc, Discurso Journal, Revista do Museu Palisa, USP Journal and Angelo Pirozelli/Folhapress acrhives. Translation and Subtitles: Matheus I.
