Sertão de resistência: reverberações de Canudos em fotografias, literatura e cinema

Abstract

Through this doctoral dissertation, we propose to analyze representations of the Brazilian Northeast backlands (sertão) by means of literary, photographic, and cinematic cultural portrayals, each producing distinct modes of historical understanding and, furthermore, forming sites of memory in which history and imagination are constructed in a conditioned manner. Drawing particularly on reflections about representation, culture, and identity, we examine how discursive regularities concerning this space are consolidated, forging a narrative of resistance. By investigating these representations, we identify the sertão as a discursive category shaped by perspectives grounded in the broader debate around the idea of nationhood, with its connection to Canudos emerging as an unavoidable reference. In order to explore and problematize how each of these representations reveals a particular way of perceiving the sertão—while acknowledging the complexity of such discussions—we structured the research around the following corpus: the photographic book Canudos 100 Anos (1997) by Evandro Teixeira, and the exhibition Do Morro da Favela à Providência de Canudos(2017) by Maurício Hora, both photographic works; the literary texts A casca da serpente (1994) by José J. Veiga, and O pêndulo de Euclides (2009) by Aleilton Fonseca; and the films Narradores de Javé (2003), written by Eliane Caffé and Luis Alberto de Abreu and directed by Eliane Caffé, and Bacurau (2019), written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. The analysis points to the existence of reinventions and resignifications of discourses about the sertão through “reverberations of Canudos,” by revisiting backlands memory and historical narratives with representations that “brush history against the grain” of official discourses, legitimizing new forms of knowledge and experience. In doing so, these works build a repertoire of resistance centered on the sertão, moving between the binaries of “remember/repair” and “challenge/resist.”