Políticas do esquecimento: trauma e fantasmagoria nas culturas brasileira e portuguesa

Abstract

There is scarce literary production concerning the Colonia Correcional da Ilha Grande e the Portuguese prisoners camp of Tarrafal. Given that those were major correctional institutions, we take that lack of literary works as an index of the problems faced both by Portugal and Brazil in dealing with the memories of the dictatorial regimes that took place in those places during the 20th century. Written under the influx of pain and trauma, the testimonial and fictional texts that deal with those prisons are marked by conflicts and denegation (Freud, 2010) towards the violence experienced by their authors. In such a context – according to Roberto Vecchi and Margarida Calafate Ribeiro (RIBEIRO & VECCHI, 2011) – the concepts of phantasmagoria, remain and trace (spuren) proposed by Walter Benjamin can work as a theoretical provocation that could help the understanding of the literary culture that rises from violent contexts. In this paper we will do a comparative study of the books Memórias do cárcere (1953), by Graciliano Ramos and Tarrafal: o campo da morte (1978), by Cândido de Oliveira. We seek to understand how both works are haunted by the ghosts of silence and repression, but decide to face then using literature as tools.