Notas sobre o matriarcado: Oswald de Andrade leitor de Bachofen e Engels

Abstract

In this article, Oswald de Andrade’s concept of Matriarchy is examined, particularly with regard to the influence of Johann Jakob Bachofen and Friedrich Engels. Our objective is to examine what aspects did Oswald retain from Bachofen’s notion of primitive matriarchy—such as the idea of maternal right, the primordial promiscuity of humankind, and a novel interpretation of the myth of Orestes, understood as a cornerstone of the patriarchal revolution. However, in order to assess the impact of Bachofen’s ideas on Oswald de Andrade’s thought, it was necessary to investigate Engels’s role as a “mediator” of this intellectual legacy. Engels’s materialist reading of Bachofen’s matriarchy serves as a crucial filter for Oswald, who discards the mystical-religious framework underlying Bachofen’s theses in order to articulate a concept of Matriarchy whose core rests on matrilineality and the opposition to private property and inheritance.