(Con)figurações da inocência na literatura brasileira: nação, identidade e colonialismo

Abstract

The thesis of this research is that the sign of innocence can be a fruitful operator to think about the formulation of ideas of nation and identity in Brazilian literature. This proposal is supported because innocence is a sign linked to the concept of Brazilianness/Brazilian since 1500, with the Portuguese invasion, when there was the insertion in the global context of the territory that today is Brazil. The innocence of the native people was evidenced in Caminha's “Letter” and, since then, this trait has been (re)designed by the feathers that proposed to represent Brazil and its people. The problem that involves such representation occurs because the affirmation of innocence, from the outset, is a strategy that camouflages a highly violent process of domination and erasure of the other. Therefore, assuming that its reiteration and updating throughout the literary tradition serves to perpetuate a discourse of domination, erasure and silencing of the other. That being said, the central hypothesis that we intend to demonstrate is that the affirmation of innocence is a strategy of the hegemonic/colonialist discourse that serves to camouflage, within the scope of discourse, the fundamental origins of violence in Brazil, whether structural or conjectural, and, therefore, it serves its maintenance. In order to discuss these issues, a theoretical corpus was organized to investigate and problematize the concepts of nation, identity, colonialism and literature, such as Silviano Santiago, Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha, Stuart Hall and Walter Mignolo. The literary corpus chosen for the analysis favours authors such as Pero Vaz de Caminha, José de Alencar, Visconde de Taunay, Machado de Assis, Rubem Fonseca and Ferréz, in addition to mentioning the work of authors such as Manuel Antônio de Almeida, Lima Barreto, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Mário de Andrade.