Passado (Re)negado: vozes que emergem de corpos silenciados

Abstract

The present thesis is inserted within the discussion around testimony and trauma. Our purpose is to establish relationships between the trauma caused by historically violent episodes and aesthetic forms of representation. In this sense, life stories and literature intersect and bring to the symbolic field the traumatic element, in order to expand in society its listening spaces. Therefore, we propose a reading that intends to bring together the oral testimonies given to the National Truth Commission and the literature produced after its establishment, in a comparative analysis that aims to understand how real cases can speak within fiction and how the literary text can act in the transformation of individual trauma into collective trauma. This research unfolds around the analysis of literary works and oral testimonies that use narrative to elaborate the historical trauma associated with the losses caused by the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985). Both testimony and literary fiction make use of narrative as a possibility to overcome the trauma experienced. In general terms, this thesis intends to discuss, through Freudian theoretical assumptions, the concept of trauma in terms of historicity, that is, we intend to situate the loss at the historical level, as advocated by the American theorist Dominick LaCapra (2005). Our analysis will be composed of distinct types of texts: K. Relato de uma busca (2014), by Bernardo Kucinski, a literary work whose personal drama corresponds to a historically concrete example; O corpo interminável (2019), by Claudia Lage, literary fiction; and the testimony of Hildegard Angel, sister of the politically disappeared Stuart Angel Jones and daughter of Zuzu Angel, a victim of the dictatorial military regime. Through the mirroring between the real and the literary, whose focus is on the forced disappearance of people, we seek to demonstrate that literature fills gaps, illuminates obscurities, and reflects on the voids that the historical record could not reach. We conclude that art breaks the silence, seeks the symbolic meaning and understanding so necessary for the elaboration of trauma.