Between violence and resistance, the testimonial value of “escrevivência”

Abstract

Violence is a distinctive mark of the historical process that engendered hierarchies and structures in Brazilian society, such as those that marginalize indigenous people, black people and homosexuals, especially when they are poor and/or women. Thinking about the forms of resistance that these marginalized people have found in literature, we propose to revisit the notion of testimony in the light of a succinct historical overview, in order to reflect on the relevance of this category to understand a part of contemporary Brazilian poetry, in its potential for denunciation of the black genocide that has been going on in the country. In the first part of the analysis, we read poems by Conceição Evaristo, dealing with the testimonial value of her notion of “escrevivência”, in its resistance to the barbarism perpetrated by the civilizing process in Brazil. Exploring the potential of this notion, we approach some oral poetic manifestations (slam poetry and rap music), in order to point out even the limits of literature itself.