(RES)POLITICAL FEELINGS IN THE PROVINCE OF CEARÁ: the case of Icó and Vila de Telha (1868)

o caso de Icó e Vila de Telha (1868)

Abstract

The present article aimed to analyze how narratives that evoked feelings and emotions were able to
serve as a political tool in the newspaper “O Cearense” and in the “Anais do Senado Imperial”
(Annals of the Imperial Senate). This research scope was based on the perception that in electoral
narratives - especially those related to acts of fraud and violence during elections in the towns of
Icó and Telha - the characters evoked their grudges, affections, and (re)sentiments when narrating a
fact or speaking about another political figure in the year 1868. Drawing upon the aforementioned
documentary sources and supporting bibliographies discussing the perspective of emotions in politics, a Textual Discursive Analysis was undertaken as the guiding methodological approach for problematization. The results obtained indicate that emotions, as a political tool, served to access a zone of confrontation among individuals that violence often failed to touch - even though these emotions were evoked as a “consequence” of acts of violence.