Letras

Language, history, and memory in writings produced by incarcerated women

2024-11-27T10:24:59-03:00

The article presents a discussion on the discursive functioning of literature in literary works produced by incarcerated women, analyzing excerpts from Ela e a reclusão: o condenado poderia ser você, by Vera Tereza de Jesus, and Quem saberia perder, by Gih Trajano, through the lens of the Materialist Discourse Analysis. Despite a significant temporal distance, these works provide and important debate on the relationship between literature, history, and memory in relation to “narrativity”. The impossibility of “narrating oneself” characterizes the relation between language, memory, and history.

Catholic-christian discourse in the connection of utterances in The Diseases of Brazil, by Valter Hugo Mãe

2025-02-13T08:51:48-03:00

This paper covers how the Catholic-Christian discourse is present in the narrative construction of the novel The Diseases of Brazil (2022) by Valter Hugo Mãe. For this purpose, we use the notions of ideological formation that, in this analysis, we understand as belonging to the colonizer and of a discursive memory, based on Pêcheux (2014) and Courtine (2022). When observing the relationship between the colonizer discourse with the plot of Valter Hugo, it was possible to notice that, since the pre-written of the fictional text, the work places discourses under the aegis of colonization. Thereby, it was noticeable the way the animalizer utterances about the black people reverberated around the fictionalized group – the abaeté people – that, in the narrative, as the black character, oppose colonization.

Iracema: a saying that produces/makes borders

2025-01-10T23:45:13-03:00

This text analyzes, from the perspective of Materialist Discourse Analysis, how Iracema by José de Alencar articulates literature and (national) language in 19th-century Brazil. It also highlights the (in)distinction between literature and science in the romantic discourse that formally works on this relationship. Iracema's textuality is interpreted as a space for the constitution of nationalist meanings, where the encounter between indigenous people and colonizers is romanticized, updating the region of colonialist memory and erasing (leaving suspended) indigenous historicity. The analysis explains how this discourse determines the national imaginary, putting fiction, science and memory in tension in the production of meanings.

Silence and memory in/through Javier Marías’s formulation in “Tomorrow in the battle think on me”

2025-02-13T16:03:16-03:00

The present paper analyzes the functioning of silence in/through Javier Marías's formulation in the literary work Tomorrow in the battle think on me. To this end, Discourse Analysis, by Pêcheux and Orlandi, was mobilized as a theoretical foundation. At the end of the study, we observed that the meanings produced by the dyad of telling and silencing evoke the memory of those killed in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and in the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939-1975), a memory that is updated in/through contrast with the period of development of the plot, the final years of the 20th century.

The circulation of literary discourse in social networks: a mater of authorship?

2024-12-12T09:25:55-03:00

This paper turns to the circulation of literary discourse in digital production conditions, considering archives that glean textualities associated with canonical authors’ names and that are made available for circulation as catchphrases. The fundamental theoretical and methodological perspective for this work is discourse analysis. The central point is the discussion of attribution of authorship in the perspective of filiation to the significations record that singularize the name of a given author, as well as the effects produced in the construction of a given collective memory of current times.

Between signs and letters: deaf, memory and literature

2025-02-13T11:22:53-03:00

This article presents the results of a doctoral research study that investigated practices and experiences related to literary literacy in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras, L1) and in Portuguese (L2), based on deaf individuals’ memories of their literary literacy experiences during childhood and adolescence. The theoretical framework is grounded in deaf studies and literary literacy. The qualitative research, conducted through semi-structured interviews in Libras, involved nine deaf signers, all with experience in literary practices. Currently, they act as literary literacy agents on social media and in other spaces. The main findings reveal that the primary settings for the literary practices experienced by the participants were the home environment and the schools for the deaf. The participants emphasized the importance of family support, especially through practices such as reading mediation by parents and other adults, and the use of visual materials such as illustrated books and comics. In schools for the deaf, priority was given to contact with Libras, with an emphasis on reading and discussion practices mediated in this language.

Cartography of memory: the fabric of reminiscences in the construction of Becos da Memória, a novel by Conceição Evaristo

2025-04-05T16:34:00-03:00

This article analyzes aspects such as memory, identity and belonging in Conceição Evaristo's novel, Becos da Memória. The author uses literary language to interweave personal and collective memories, articulating them with questions of belonging, identity and space, especially in the context of urban slum clearance and marginalization in Brazil in the 1980s. As a theoretical basis, we consider the studies of, especially, Gagnebin (2009), who discusses the relationship between remembering, writing and forgetting; Martins (2021), who explores the “Afrographies of memory” and the importance of cultural traditions in preserving memory; Monteiro (1988), who addresses the crises in geography and their implications.

Generational shock and power: dark blows in the basement of memory in Raduan Nassar’s Lavoura Arcaica

2025-02-14T09:26:02-03:00

Raduan Nassar’s Lavoura Arcaica is a novel rich in lyricism and symbolism, exploring the clash between generations through memory. André embodies a lyrical, resistant memory, while his father’s is pragmatic, spreading traditionalist ideologies. The article investigates memory’s manifestations, clashes, and effects, viewing memory as antithetical and dual in the novel. Four analysis categories are established: formal aspects, family dynamics, generational memory, and intertextuality. Drawing on studies by Paul Paul Ricoeur (2003), Jacques Le Goff (1991) e Jeanne Gagnebin (2002), the research conceptualizes and problematizes memory.

Azul Corvo: metaphors of a guerrilla war

2025-02-15T09:11:58-03:00

Faced with the issues surrounding the understanding of the authoritarian government in Brazil that occurred between 1964 and 1985, and based on the theoretical framework that guides the relationship between literature, memory, and history, as expounded by scholars such as Walter Benjamin, Joël Candau, Eurídice Figueiredo, Seligman Silva, and others, this article aims to reflect on the narrative strategies of the postmodern novel in combating the forgetting of the Brazilian Military Dictatorship through the analysis of the novel Azul Corvo by Adriana Lisboa. Additionally, we will also address the idea of testimony in the face of the silence of those who experienced guerrilla warfare.

Disregard and trauma: reflections of the dictatorship years in the indigenous narrative of Davi Kopenawa

2024-10-29T15:45:19-03:00

The violence against indigenous peoples in Brazil began before the period of the military dictatorship and is still present nearly four decades after its end. However, this historical pattern does not absolve the military governments from having intensified tensions between whites and indigenous people. The testimony of Davi Kopenawa in The Falling Sky, for example, is permeated by individual and collective trauma, expressed through the representation of the traumatic event, whose function is the establishment of meaning for the victim and the maintenance of the group's identity. By analyzing this testimony, we can assess its political and documentary character.

Rhizomes of ancestrality: colonialities in Órfãos do Eldorado, by Milton Hatoum

2025-02-13T15:00:27-03:00

This article aims analyze the novel Órfãos do Eldorado (2008), authored by Milton Hatoum, taking as a reading key the theoretical perspective around the colonialities of power, being and knowledge. Those categories are investigated mainly by Aníbal Quijano (2005) and Ramón Grosfoguel (2008). In the novel, there is the presence of marks of colonial additions in the treatment of indigenous characters, making the authoritarian, genocidal and epistemic practices that still affect traditional peoples in contemporary times subject to questioning. Thus, this analysis turns to the interrogation of colonial standardizations of indigenous peoples that figure in capitalism as a world-system.

From the body to the house: spaces of transformation in A Gorda

2025-04-05T17:02:04-03:00

This article aims to analyze the work A Gorda by Isabela Figueiredo (2016), focusing on the theme of memory. It examines the intrinsic relationship between memory and narrative plot, especially concerning the protagonist, who, in daydreams, permeated by omens and premonitions, revisits her own identity, both bodily and intimate. This study starts from the interconnection between literature and memory, providing the observation of how these areas intertwine for the analysis of a literary work. In addition, it enables the promotion of interdisciplinary knowledge between these spheres.

Variations on chinese themes and the arrangement of Judith Gautier’s Livre de Jade

2025-02-07T15:42:11-03:00

The musical analogy of the first versions of Livre de Jade (1867), Variations sur des thèmes chinois, serves as a foundation in this article to offer hypotheses on the book’s structure. By going through Judith Gautier's reformulations towards condensation, the aim would be to detect not a process of stabilization, but the dynamics of a writing made up of modulations, suggestions and inconstancy. Under the influence of a conception of beauty made up in between the eternal and the transitory, the former is evoked from the ancestral memory of Chinese poetry and materializes by recovering leitmotive, making her book a constant exercise in meditation and memory.

Resignified dystopias: a comparative reading between Karin Boye’s “Kallocain” and George Orwell’s “1984”

2025-10-09T14:50:45-03:00

This paper presents a comparison of readings of two novels belonging to the genre dystopia/science fiction, published in the 1940s: Karin Boye’s Kallocain, and George Orwell’s 1984, which present characters describing their reactions and experiences in totalitarian scenarios. Based on the theoretical frame offered by the works by Ricoeur (2007), Barthes (2013) and Chauvin (2024), we develop this reading following the central motto in both narratives: the role of memory.

Feminist epistemology: problematizing the memory of tradition in literature, criticism and culture

2025-06-29T09:36:31-03:00

For feminist epistemology, the subject of knowledge must be considered as an effect of cultural determinations, located in a complex field of social, sexual and ethnic relations. The criteria of objectivity and neutrality that guarantee the veracity of knowledge fall to the ground when a feminist way of thinking is incorporated, assuming the subjective, emotional and intuitive dimensions of knowledge and the respective processes of its production. This break encourages us to explore other conceptual and methodological paths, whose reflections may contribute to highlight the interest and effectiveness of multidisciplinary contributions that favor new gender equitable conditions for the production of scientific knowledge, integrating the various reflections and female experiences with a view to produce a more shared knowledge in relation to otherness and social reality.

Apresentação do Dossiê: Literatura, Memória e Discurso

2025-11-24T14:09:16-03:00