The dissertation deals with writings from the XX century grouped under the notion of interpretations of Brazil , focusing on their uses of the concept of formation . I have identified five traces exposed in those uses: (1) the centrality of the nation; (2) the incompleteness of the transition from the colonial to the modern condition, marking a coexistence of the old and the new; (3) the internal inequality within the country; (4) the mobilization of external parameters in the definition of Brazil; and (5) the focus on the specificities of Brazilian formative process. These five traces are shared by all the texts selected; but, at the same time, they are expressed in different ways according to each text. Part I stresses the recurrence of the concept of formation in the interpretations of Brazil (chapter 2); after that, it lays out general lines of the perspective from which the uses of formation will be interpreted in the texts selected (chapter 3). Part II (chapters 4-12) is devoted to the interpretations of the texts, focusing on the uses of formation and those five traces previously mentioned. Part III begins with a controversy that took place mainly in the late 1980s and that is expressive of many aspects raised in Part II (chapter 13); then, it tackles three interpreters of Brazil that have advanced, in different ways, efforts similar to the one I will embrace myself in the last part of the text, that is, an alternative interpretation of the formation of contemporary Brazil from some kind of engagement with previous interpretations of Brazil (chapters 14-16). Finally, Part IV (chapter 17) builds on the previous discussion, in order to reflect upon, or theorize from, the five traces of formation in the interpretations of Brazil .