Literatura e Autoritarismo

On “Sexual Deviance” in Milan Kundera’s novels

2024-10-31T12:19:59-03:00

In Milan Kundera’s novels, sexual deviance occurs repeatedly. Taking some of Kundera’s representative novels as research perspective, this article tries to analyze the causes of sexual deviance for different genders. Through text analysis, it is not difficult to find that the major reasons for men’s sexual deviance are to seek sexual stimulation, to prove masculinity or to make up for regret. For women, sexual deviance occurs mainly to take revenge on irresponsible husbands, to pursue feminism or to satisfy basic physiological needs. Incest and naked parties are two extreme forms of sexual deviance in Kundera’s novels. For Kundera, incest can cause irreparable harm to the family members. Therefore, it belongs to a kind of social spiritual ecological problem. Nude party is a medium for Kundera to express his ethical thoughts, which expresses the author’s respect and recognition of women’s social status. Subsequently, the article focuses on the trauma brought by the sexual deviant behavior to family members and the reactions of those victims. Through in-depth analysis, the article aims to summarize Kundera’s attitude towards sexual deviance. Different from the traditional concept, Kundera’s attitude towards the third party in sexual deviance is quite tolerant which reflects his critical attitude towards traditional ethics. Through the analysis of sexual deviance in Kundera’s novels, this paper aims to provide some enlightenment for solving the similar problems related to sexual deviance in real life.

The poetics of authoritarianism in the novel We by Zamiátim

2024-07-21T23:46:47-03:00

The aim of this article is to investigate the representations of an authoritarian dystopian society in the novel We (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin. To achieve this goal, we will employ the concept of poetics of authoritarianism, coined from the assumptions of dystopian theories by Fatima Vieira (2010) and the theses on the origins of totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (2012). The hypothesis is that literary works directly or indirectly addressing totalitarian regimes possess a unique aesthetic singularity that sets them apart from other works with distinct themes. Another approach that aligns with the themes addressed and broadens the scope of the hypothesis can be found in the analysis of catastrophic events in Oliveira’s work (2008).

Erotic Innuendos in Asfalto Selvagem by Nelson Rodrigues

2024-08-11T11:04:28-03:00

The investigation of the seductive game, often buried under cover of dissimulation, which involves us in family, religious, political contexts among many others and the outbreak of repressed desires and fantasies exposed by Nelson Rodrigues in Asfalto Selvagem: Engraçadinha, seus amores e seus pecados were our academic investigation purposes. Theoretical principles related to literary verisimilitude developed by Terry Eagleton, as well as Freud’s psychoanalytic principles in relation to the feminine, the bisexual and the passive were our theoretical foundation and provided us with arguments to deepen the interpretations of Rodrigues’ writings. To this end, our specific objectives were: a) To relate Freud’s attempts on the feminine, in the characters Engraçadinha, Silene and Letícia and; b) To analyze the movement of bisexuality in the character Letícia. Our research was bibliographic, descriptive with a qualitative approach. Through the readings and investigations undertaken, we realized that Nelson Rodrigues’ novel presents not only patterns of behavior that describe characters based on psychoanalysis, but the author himself, at various times, uses psychoanalytic terms to explain the behavior of some of them and reveal patterns in others, which proves Nelson Rodrigues’ psychoanalytic perspective.

Resistance Poetry to Italian Fascism: An Analysis of Salvatore Quasimodo

2024-11-26T16:18:15-03:00

This study aims to analyze some of the poetic works produced by Salvatore Quasimodo during the period of Italian Fascism (1922-1943), in opposition to the authoritarian regime in Italy and World War II, and to identify, through the literary text, the specificity in the production of resistance poetry. To do this, we will analyze the poems Alle fronde dei salici and Milano, agosto 1943, published in the book Giorno dopo Giorno (1947). For the theoretical foundation of this research, we take as a starting point the concepts of resistance literature developed by Alfredo Bosi (2002) and Italo Calvino (2001). Revisiting the idea of literature as an artistic-political instrument, the analyses point to the use of poetry as a means of social organization and denunciation, especially during a period of dictatorship and war, with Quasimodo’s writing being a lyric of resistance.

Quando a terra era redonda, by José J. Veiga, an intuitive dystopia

2025-09-08T19:40:16-03:00

This work proposes an analysis of the short story “Quando a Terra era redonda,” by José J. Veiga, as a dystopia. In this narrative, written in the form of an essay, the narrator/author conducts a bibliographic review on the thesis that the Earth is round. Based on this premise, several passages reveal that, in the reality of the text, the belief that one lives on a flat planet is a strategy of domination orchestrated by an oppressive regime, as occurs in dystopian texts. Thus, we intend to perceive the occurrence of dystopia in Veiga’s text by comparing narrative passages with the considerations of scholars on the subject, who point out its characteristic features. The research is bibliographic and exploratory, based on authors such as Claeys (2017), Moylan (2016), and Sargent (2010). The results demonstrate that the short story is a dystopia, not in a usual way, but intuitively, which confirms the various possibilities of hybridism that can operate in this textual form.

The discarded bodies of the military dictatorship: testimony and denunciation in the arts of Pedro Tierra and Artur Barrio

2024-08-01T22:45:33-03:00

This article deepens the discussion about resistance to the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985) by exploring the poems "Poema-Prólogo" and "O sangue do rio" by Pedro Tierra, together with the mixed technique work "SITUAÇÃO T/T, 1........................1970" by Artur Barrio. In addition to serving as testimonies of this dark time in Brazilian history, these works are analyzed as manifestations of resistance and confrontation against the authoritarian regime. The analysis goes beyond the historical-political context, revealing common elements between artistic creations. In particular, the recurring theme of provocation and memory related to the dumping of bodies of disappeared people in rivers stands out, which function as powerful symbols of these times of repression and violence. This in-depth approach allows for a broader and more meaningful understanding of artistic expressions as forms of protest and preservation of collective memory in the face of a dark era in Brazilian history.

The Symbolism of Rebellion in Germinal (1885) by Émile Zola

2025-06-30T18:01:07-03:00

This article analyzes Émile Zola’s novel Germinal (1885) through the lens of Furio Jesi’s concept of revolt, also engaging with Marxist thought and the principles of scientific naturalism. The miners’ strike in Montsou is interpreted as a process that oscillates between an attempted revolution and an impulsive revolt, highlighting the tension between collective planning and insurrectional spontaneity. By examining the symbolic dehumanization of the enemy, the erasure of individuality, and the emergence of a collective hero, the novel reveals how insurrection acquires ideological and symbolic dimensions. The article also discusses the role of social and hereditary determinism in the construction of characters—particularly Étienne Lantier, who embodies the contradictions of leadership, political transformation, and personal ambition. Finally, it argues that although the material failure of the strike is evident, its symbolic and social consequences endure, fostering a growing collective consciousness.

When Fiction Serves the Unforgettable: A Reading of Christa Wolf’s Blickwechsel

2025-08-29T17:25:01-03:00

Christa Wolf fictionally recounts the historical events that occurred at the end of the Second World War in Germany, a moment that is also part of one of the darkest periods in the recent history of humanity. The writer not only tells her own story, through self-reflective process, but also explains that the events, the historical facts, the characters involved, the lines, the scenes, the time and even the feelings themselves, were imperfectly rescued from memory after 25 years and in this process of remembering and giving new meaning, the facts are placed from another point of view, no longer from the perspective of when they happened. By constructing this narrative, through imagery and fiction, the writer allows us readers to glimpse responsible writing, in this construction of the memory of the horrible.

Amazon between narratives: Authoritarianism, literature and the contradictions of the national project in the Vargas Era

2025-06-09T21:55:49-03:00

This article investigates the Brazilian state's actions in the Amazon between 1930 and 1945, analyzing Getúlio Vargas's speeches in Belém (1933) and Manaus (1940) and establishing connections with the literature produced about the region. The short story Terra Imatura by Alfredo Ladislau (1924) is highlighted to illustrate how Vargas's discourse appropriated literary texts to promote a centralizing state vision focused on territorial occupation and economic development. The study demonstrates that, starting in the 1930s, a rhetoric portraying the Amazon as an "empty space" was consolidated, disregarding its socio-environmental and cultural complexities. This authoritarian narrative, disconnected from regional specificities, remains influential today, inviting reflection on the Brazilian state's role regarding the forest and its peoples, especially in a context where the Amazon draws global attention.

Keywords: Getúlio Vargas; Political discourses; Terra Imatura.

The myth of Ham: racist uses of biblical narrative

2024-07-30T23:39:00-03:00

Based on a bibliographical study, this article aims to highlight some uses of the biblical myth of Ham, linked to slavery, whitening and current political uses. Such uses are linked to different historical and social moments, which are shaping Brazilian history and which reflect on our current scenario. From these relationships, different uses of the myth of Cam and arguments that support discourses currently present for validation of prejudice and religious racism are constructed.

André Jolles and the simple form of collaborationism

2024-08-14T22:33:36-03:00

In this essay, the life and work of literary theorist André Jolles (1874-1946) is taken as a starting point for the discussion on the responsibility of individuals in historical processes. The discussion on the individual and History is based on Jolles, Hannah Arendt, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Paul Ricoeur, Regina Zilberman and Mary Del Priore. At the end, Jolles' work is revisited to consider, with Jean-Paul Sartre, the figure of the collaborator, recurrent in the Second World War and today.

The work The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) by Gabriel García Márquez: approaches to contemporary Brazil

2024-11-26T16:17:53-03:00

Literature, like history, has ties with power. Both are dedicated to addressing the events of the past, influencing the interpretation of the present and the invention of the future. Based on this understanding, this article proposes a reading of the book The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), by Gabriel García Márquez, with the aim of articulating it with the events of a contemporary Brazil. In particular, the possible similarities between the protagonist of the book and the most recent former president of Brazil: Jair Bolsonaro. Márquez’s work is the main source referenced by this paper. Bibliographical literature on the subject and journalistic content about the former president after his defeat in the October 2022 elections were also articulated. This text is divided into four main sections: 1) reflects on the relation between literature, history and power in Latin America, 2) dedicated to García Márquez, 3) presents general aspects of the work in question and 4) discusses the relationship between both political figures. Regarding results, the study sought to demonstrate the existing link between literature, history and power, and its relation with the act to remember or/and to forget.

Eating the Past: the reimagination of nazism through David Brin's graphic novel The Life Eaters

2025-05-04T15:51:58-03:00

The present paper aims at discussing the reimagining of Nazism in the graphic novel The Life Eaters (2017 [2003]) by David Brin, which central theme is the victory of the National Socialists through the involvement of the gods of Norse mythology. In the development of this work, the concept of Alternate History, a subgenre of science fiction, is employed to facilitate an understanding of the role of popular culture in the speculative (re)construction of social memory by altering the sequence of time and its events, thereby disrupting the conventional conception of past, present and future. The work under scrutiny in this study employs a narrative that interweaves elements of Nazism with the occult, thereby challenging the conventional boundaries that delineate reality from fiction. This approach prompts the audience to contemplate a range of political and symbolic interpretations of the Holocaust. In the context of Alternate History, it becomes evident that the graphic content serves to delineate notions that are either problematic or critical of the utilization of contemporary historical memory.

The silence of the general's granddaughter: The work of affective estrangement in Rio-Paris Rio, by Luciana Hidalgo

2024-11-26T16:15:56-03:00

In this essay, I approach the novel Rio-Paris-Rio regarding the subjectivity of the main character and her process on elaborating her identifications and possibilities in negotiating with the past and her family ties with people connected to the dictatorship. This work of the main character overlaps her time and space displacement and the subjective displacement, witch turns the exile issue even more complex. Because the position of enunciation of the discourse is affected by an authoritarian context such as the one of the dictatorship, I do argue that the character's silence does not mean the absence of a message, but must be seen like the limit of what we can say in given conditions.

Notes on philosophy and literary studies

2024-11-24T17:26:07-03:00

Based on reflections that point to the way in which philosophy puts literature at the service of its concepts, this article aims to explore an issue that transcends the relationship between both: the treatment that literary works receive as objects of literary studies and, consequently, approached from some Theory. It is, therefore, an intricate theoretical-methodological problem pertinent to the intersection between philosophy, Theory and Literary Studies, to which we intend to shed some light from an essayistic perspective based on thinkers of the genre, such as Georg Lukács, Paul Valéry and Teodor Adorno, in order to bring a new perspective to the relationship between literary studies and philosophy.

Poetry as a Weapon for Survival: Dictatorship, Resistance, and Testimony in the 'Poema-Prólogo' by Pedro Tierra

2025-04-08T15:18:29-03:00

The main objective of this article is to analyze the poetic representation of dictatorship, resistance and testimony in the poem “Poema-Prólogo”, from the work Poemas do povo da noite (1979), by Pedro Tierra. This is a bibliographical, descriptive and analytical research, proposing to contribute to social and academic knowledge, especially in the recent situation in the country, which has shown an increase in anti-democratic acts. To this end, studies by theorists who address the subject in question were used: Fico, Arns and Wright, Bosi, Salgueiro and Silva. Based on the analysis, it was found that the poet uses resistance to testify to repression in the context of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-1985), through verses written during the years he was in the “basements” of the State, from 1972 to 1977. The poem, due to the affinity between the identity of the poet and the lyrical self, provides information about the past that history alone is incapable of completing.

“Gray Men”: reading the stories of Tadeusz Borowski from the perspective of Primo Levi

2025-08-05T15:16:05-03:00

This article presents short stories by Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski. He was part of the generation born in the 1920s, known as Colombo, formed in a humanist spirit that hopefully emulated a Poland that had just regained its Independence. This idealism clashes with the Age of Camps. Borowski was a survivor of Auschwitz and his short stories are inscribed in this abyss. In them, the writer creates a shuffling game that mixes his experiences and the first-person voices of the narrators. To read them, we turn to Primo Levi, also a survivor. In The Drowned and the Survivors, the writer sees three kinds of witnesses to the Lager: the “anomalous” witness (the survivors), the integral witnesses (of complete impossibility) and the historian-witness (the political prisoners). Tadeusz is a representative of the latter. In addition, Levi proposes a place of indistinction and destruction of the human, the “gray zone”, where the men of the tales rage.

Reflections on migration and the African diaspora in the biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua

2024-07-31T22:51:27-03:00

Enlightened by Friedman (2007), this work proposes a reflection on the notions of migration, diasporas, and borders in the biography of Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua. The value of Mahommah’s biography to the construction and anchoring of a collective memory of the horrors experienced by the enslaved is discussed based on Halbwachs (1990). Furthermore, this work takes Woodwards’ (2000) contributions into account to discuss the identity formation of an individual under compulsory migration, as well as the effects of colonialism (Vertovec, 2004) in both the subject’s life and understanding of the world. In a few words, the results show that Mahommah’s testimony allows us to rethink the historical past concerning enslavement and resignify it in the present, given the rareness and importance of a report that, despite the intervention of the white moderator, offers an inside perspective of the facts regarding the enslavement in Brazil.

Silences and noises in Latin American history in the short story Só vim telefonar, by Gabriel García Márquez

2024-07-28T18:44:24-03:00

The aim of this study is to interpret the short story Só vim telefonar, which makes up the book Doze contos peregrinos, written by Gabriel García Márquez (1992). Through this narrative, the pilgrimage of the character María de la Luz Cervantes is analyzed in terms of her representation of violence that contextualized the years of dictatorial regimes in Latin America. For methodological purposes, this is a qualitative work, with interpretative characteristics. Based on the analysis of the story and the literary representation, it is possible to affirm that the violence of the dictatorship oppressed society, silenced, exiled, marked and violated Latin Americans. In effect, García Márquez narrates the suffering of his character María and does it in a fictional way without ceasing to represent the harshness and stupidity that permeate exiles.

Necrológio, by Victor Giudice: a cover reading

2024-08-19T22:58:08-03:00

This essay aims to analyze the conception of Victor Giudice as a cover artist in his debut work: Necrológio. The image established numerous disruptive and innovative questions for the publication, which intersect particularly with the first story started in the final third of the cover, called O arquivo. The work will seek to carry out an analysis from a somewhat unusual perspective and linked, in fact, to a process and literary nonsense, by focusing primarily on the book cover. To do this, the characteristics of the composition of the image, the play of colors and their connections with the first sentences of the story will be observed. The essay will be based on studies previously carried out on Giudice's work, especially regarding the cover of the first edition of Necrológio, such as Almeida (2018), Melo (2011), Coelho (2013), among other researchers.

Feminine resistance in the short story “A Mãe de um Rio,” by Agustina Bessa-Luís: reflection on memory, ancestry, and myth

2024-07-21T23:27:23-03:00

This article analyzes elements related to memory, ancestry, and myth present in the short story A Mãe de Um Rio as mechanisms of resistance to the hegemony of a masculine-centered mythical ancestry established and maintained through the monopoly and control of memory. In light of this premise, the study considers this category through Michael Pollak’s (1989) concept of memória de enquadramento, presented in his article Memória, Esquecimento e Silêncio, which is organized through control mechanisms aimed at producing and maintaining collective memory. From this perspective, the analysis focuses on strategies of resistance inherent to the artistic process—problematized by Alfredo Bosi (1996) and theoretically supported by Walter Benjamin (1987). Concerning the ethical dimension and the writer’s craft, another fundamental reference for this analysis lies in the correlation between the concepts of resistência das existências and resistência como desvio, developed by Augusto Sarmento-Pantoja (2022) and Tânia Sarmento-Pantoja (2022), respectively. The analyses point to the existence of a set of resistance strategies within the short story, which, through the characters’ actions, challenge the hegemonic masculine values intended to subordinate feminine existences.