Abstract

Starting from Franklin Leopoldo e Silva’s reflections, we will seek to recover some fragments of the Maria Antônia event to understand it in its historical density, that is, as a concrete experience marked by the experience of belonging to the present time and as a transgression of the established limits. After that, we will try to reflect on the ambiguity of this experience as an “opening up of possibilities” and “loss of the as-yet-unrealized”. This consideration will lead us to question “presentism” and the adaptation phenomenon that is inherent to it, thus proposing a critical re-elaboration of the relations between past and present, that is, of the historical experience, from which the Maria Antônia event could be updated from the perspective of a critique of the present.