The present study intends to present the partial results of the research developed during the postdoctoral stage at Stanford University - CA / USA, between 2014 and 2015. The research was structured from the research on new possibilities for the constitution of analytical keys in the field of history and historiography, taking as object and source a set of documents with five manuscript volumes, on education, written by the Alagoan intellectual Aureliano Cândido Tavares Bastos (1839-1875), in Empire Brazil. The proposed analysis of the interlocutions of the intellectual with the ideas circulated in the period, investigated through the manuscripts, aims to deepen the studies and historical analyzes that allow to think of the "production of presence" as a possibility to know and produce narratives about a certain historical object, taking as reference the sources and analyzes on these same objects. In addition, it seeks to broaden the use of concepts and concepts that were present in the debate in the process of constitution of the Brazilian public scene, with a focus on education. The proposed objectives converge to the idea of the possibility of elaborating forms of knowledge that depart from the interpretative analyzes and their narratives, but to overcome them, that go beyond the attribution of meaning to the objects, moving to narratives more present, more lively lives, less stabilized: it is a process of production of presence or, in other words, an objectification of sensitivities. This research focuses more directly on the period in which Tavares Bastos wrote the notebooks on education, that is, between 1866 and 1868, considering his political insertion as deputy by the state of Alagoas, and the debate on education present in the public scene of Brazil Empire. All the effort of the politician had on the horizon the overcoming of the retrograde conditions in which the Brazilian society was. During the investigative course, we consider that historical studies on education, in general, have advanced a lot in Brazil and in the world. Not only in quantitative terms but, above all, in qualitative terms, when one can observe, refinement in the analysis, methodological choice and treatment of the sources and objects, besides a greater familiarity and intersection with other areas of knowledge, such as politics, Philosophy, study of genres and ethnicities, among others. Far from thinking of the "laurels" and aware that this reality increases the challenges for historians, the recognition of this led us to another question to be faced: how can we think of new ways of producing historical knowledge to advance the field? Some works by Stanford University's professor of history of comparative literature, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, point to the fact that this reality may provoke a possible stagnation, especially if we consider the predominance of highly crystallized interpretive models, justified by a certain exhaustion of the analytical model Interpretation in modernity.