O NUPE

Abstract

This article is a free-form essay that employs memory as a theoretical-methodological tool to orient readers and provide a foundation for the text itself. It is, therefore, an exercise in critical storytelling—imbued with poetic lightness and rooted in oral tradition, with its characteristic flourishes and metaphors—recounting the memories of an older, imposing man regarding the history he lived alongside and within the UNESP Black Research and Extension Center (NUPE) from its initial meetings in 1999 to the present day. We have traversed a long path, acknowledging the many events and figures that paved the way for NUPE’s emergence in 1999—such as the profound reflection on what I termed the "cultural revolution of 1989" and the epistemic and institutional racism of 1999 at the Faculty of Philosophy and Sciences (Marília campus), which, as a counter-movement, gave rise to NUPE within UNESP. Many collective memories surfaced, as NUPE was not the creation of a single individual but the work of diverse Black and non-Black people—both from within and outside our university. Here, however, we center the narrative on my own institutional memory, spanning my more than thirty years as a UNESP faculty member and my twenty-six-year involvement with NUPE; I am the only member who has remained continuously active with the group from its founding in 2000 to the present.