Memory: rooting is a fundamental human right

Abstract

For the first time since V!RUS was created, the interview we publish in this issue was not carried out by the journal's Editorial Committee. It would have been an immense honor to meet Professor Ecléa Bosi personally, to listen to her about her unique way of connecting research and social justice, her extremely ethical stance toward academia and society. One of the very few people to receive the maximum academic distinction from our university, Professor Bosi was honored in a beautiful speech of her friend and colleague Professor Marilena Chauí, in the ceremony of granting the title of Professor Emeritus. In her remarks, Chauí emphasizes that one of Ecléa Bosi's greatest contributions to Social Psychology was to relate "theory, method, and techniques of research and social, political and cultural militancy, from the definition of Psychology as a phenomenology of expressive acts and the relation of friendship between the researcher and the individual being studied as a person." (Chauí 2008). This is no small task since it consists of a daily challenge that pervades every act of every researcher who believes that memory, rather than a restoration of the past, can be "a generator of the future of society."

From her vast theoretical work, many very concrete actions were derived, such as the University Open to Senior Citizens Program, which gives access for people over sixty to any undergraduate course at USP. Under her initiative, communities of readers have also been created in public libraries in Sao Paulo, an idea derived from her work on the readings of working women. In this V!RUS issue, which addresses the multifaceted theme of the construction of memory, no one better than Ecléa Bosi could help us broaden our understanding of the subject.

It happens that, sadly, Professor Bosi left us earlier this year, passing away in Sao Paulo on July 10th. And even so, and for this reason, we decided to pay her a simple posthumous homage, republishing here one of her last interviews, initially published in the academic journal Dispositiva, of the Graduate Program in Social Communication, Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, PUC-Minas. Conducted by Prof. Dr. Mozahir Bruck, the interview contains a set of the researcher core ideas, sent to Professor Bruck by email, discussed in a telephone conversation, and edited by him in a question/answer format. In this republishing by V!RUS, we have added references to Bosi's writings in some sections, aiming to contribute to broadening the interest and access to her work.

We wholeheartedly thank Dispositiva journal and especially Prof. Dr. Mozahir Bruck for their kind permission to republish this document. ¹