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RESUMO
ABSTRACT
The comprehension of concepts articulated inside a discourse permits reveal ideological and
domination practices. In the international legal discourse, the concepts of civilization and barbarism
played a role of manipulating the way non-European peoples were depicted, e from that representation,
it could be established strategies of subjugation. Since its foundational texts, in sixteenth century, to it
definitive establishment as an autonomous discipline in the nineteenth century, international law had
utilized these concepts to articulate an hierarchical law, covered, however, by an universalistic
rhetoric. In the present research, it is utilized the conceptual history, by Reinhart Koselleck, as a key
to comprehend the concepts civilized and barbarian in the international legal discourse, from
sixteenth to nineteenth century. It was important, to historicize the concepts, reconstructing their
genesis, to attain all the semantic possibilities that the concept can assume inside a discourse. Thus, it
was formulated the genesis of the concept of barbarian and investigated the articulation with the
rising droit de gens of sixteenth century. Then, the concept of civilized was approached, as well as
the manipulation of it in the legal texts in the transition from the sixteenth to seventeenth century.
Finally, it was analyzed the resignification of concepts entailed by the emergence of the word
civilization in the eighteenth century, e the new configuration of international legal discourse. The
manipulation of concept by the international legal discourse conceived a hierarchical law, under which
non-European peoples were placed in an asymmetrical relationship, enabling their subjugation by a
legal rhetoric.
Key words: Conceptual history. Civilization. Barbarism. History of international law. Colonialism.