STRUCTURAL RACISM IN ALLAN KARDEC'S WRITINGS: HISTORICAL-DISCURSIVE ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT 'PERFECTIBILITY OF THE BLACK RACE' (1862)

Abstract

This article analyzes the presence of structural racism in the writings of Allan Kardec, codifier of Spiritism, with specific focus on the text "Perfectibility of the Black Race," published in the Spiritist Review in April 1862. Through historical-discursive analysis grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis by Norman Fairclough, Teun van Dijk, and Eni Puccinelli Orlandi, articulated with Silvio Almeida's concept of structural racism, we investigate how Kardec reproduced and legitimized pseudoscientific theories characteristic of the nineteenth century, hierarchizing races and naturalizing the supposed inferiority of the Black population. The research contextualizes Kardecian thought within the panorama of nineteenth-century scientific racism, identifying convergences between Spiritist discourse and hegemonic racial ideologies (social Darwinism, polygenism, phrenology, physical anthropology). Linguistic analysis reveals three systematic semantic fields: inferiority, infantilization, and animalization. Absolute certainty modalization naturalizes hierarchies as unquestionable facts, while biological determinism equates African bodies to "imperfect instruments." Kardec articulates this determinism with Spiritist reincarnation doctrine, proposing racial evolutionism where less evolved spirits would incarnate in inferior races. Strategic silences conceal colonial violence and complex African civilizations. We conclude that Kardec's writings do not constitute individual anomaly but manifest structural racism of nineteenth-century French society, perpetuating hierarchizations that demand critical recognition and overcoming in the contemporary Spiritist movement for development of truly antiracist practices.