Résumé :
Benjamim de Oliveira (1870–1954), a Black man born to enslaved parents, was an iconic Brazilian clown and multi-instrumentalist. The extraordinary trajectory of Benjamim Chaves (Oliveira’s birth name) and its impact on circus arts in Brazil was the central topic of Ermínia Silva’s Ph.D. thesis, which was completed at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at the University of Campinas in 2003. Years later, Silva’s study gave rise to the first edition of the book Circo-Teatro: Benjamim de Oliveira e a teatralidade circense no Brasil (2007), which was then revised and expanded fifteen years later in its second edition (2022).
Ermínia Silva’s research, now considered a milestone in the history of circus in Brazil, gave rise to a profound change in the field by moving away from the hegemonic notion of history built by a systematic organization of facts and events toward a contextualized and critical interpretation of history.

DOI  : 10.3998/circus.4410