O som do rugido da onça: rewriting history through the enchantment of the world

Abstract

The novel O som do rugido da onça (VERUNSHK, 2021) narrates the death of the girl Iñe-e. An indigenous child from the Miranha tribe, the girl was handed over by her own father to two researchers to be taken to Germany along with other indigenous children, where they would be exhibited as an example of fauna for the country’s court. The account of this abduction is based on historiographical reports about the expedition of the zoologist Johann Baptist von Spix and the botanist Carl Friedrich Martius, considered two of the most “famous and important travelers who disembarked in Brazil (...) [whose trip] led to the most complete exploitation of brazilian fauna and flora up to date” (LIMA, 2019). This article analyzes how the novel subverts the narrative of a hegemonic historiography, written from the perspective of scientist-kidnappers, by mobilizing the insertion of originary peoples worldviews. These worldviews appear, throughout the novel, as “erasures” in the story, and allow the Character of Iñee-e to understand her place in a world where indigenous people like her were massacred and exploited in the colonization process. This enchantment allows another character, Josefa, to think about herself and review her origins that were historically and discursively erased. The argument elaborates the conclusions: 1) that history is neither linear nor homogeneous; 2) the Enlightenment promoted a disenchantment of the world, replacing imagination with knowledge in order to justify colonial violence; 3) if reality is dependent on human action, it is subject to be modified by interventions.