Ficção científica feminista e engajamento: Relatos clandestinos em O conto da aia, de Margaret Atwood, “Réquiem para a Humanidade”, de Thabata Borine, e “Projeto Áquila”, de Gabriela Ventura

Abstract

This thesis aims at investigating the relationship among the Science Fiction narratives O conto da aia ([1985] 2017), “Réquiem para a Humanidade” (2013) and “Projeto Áquila” (2013) and what is understood as Engaged Literature. Considering their formal features and content, the main hypothesis lies in the possibility of these narratives constituting themselves as alternative versions to the official history. This hypothesis is based on the fact that the novel and the two stories under analysis are structured in testimonial accounts constructed by narrators in accentuated situations of oppression. Such characters elaborate clandestine reports, since they cannot narrate in the circumstances in which they are inserted, but they find ways to do so. In an attempt to prove the hypothesis, we take advantage of the propositions by Jean-Paul Sartre ([1948] 2004) about what he names as Engaged Literature, as well as of the reflections by Roland Barthes (1972; [1953] 2016) on the aesthetic influence of formal aspects on narratives with this kind of content. As these are Science Fiction narratives, there are two important concepts to consider: Brian McHale’s (1987) conceptions about what he calls “ontological perspective of literature” and Darko Suvin’s (1979) “cognitive estrangement”. We also rely on the reflections built by Ritch Calvin (2016) about the relationship between what the theorist understands as epistemology and the Feminist Science Fiction genre. In order to support the notion of the possibility of Science Fiction narratives being related to historiographic discourses, we resort to Linda Hutcheon’s (1991) thoughts on the “historical reference” in fiction and the notion of archive formulated by Derrida (2001) and interpreted by Figueiredo (2017). Along the way, we also raise discussions about the decentralized position of the contemporary narrator, grounded on Theodor Adorno (2003) and Jaime Ginzburg (2012), in addition to pointing out relations of the analytical objects with what has been named as Feminist Epistemology, based on the foundations by Gayatri Spivak (2010), Sandra Harding ([1986] 2019; 1988; 1991), Donna Haraway ([1995] 2009), Patricia Hill Collins (1997) and Miranda Fricker (2007).