Cartographies of Ori in “Amnésia”, by Eliana Alves Cruz

Abstract

This article analyzes the short story “Amnesia”, by Eliana Alves Cruz, using the Cartography of the Ori
(Penna, 2021) as a framework, understood not only as an epistemological basis but also as a device for dialogue and a proposed reading of the literary narrative. Anchored in Afro-Brazilian animist thought, the analysis investigates how long-term memory, ancestry, and historical trauma are articulated in the experience of the character Jussara. The reading establishes a comparative approach between the protagonist’s journey and the narratives of the old black man Pai Benedito, in which the reorganization of memory occurs amidst prayers, whispers of the sea, and Afro-Brazilian reminiscences. In both cases, it is argued that enstasis–understood as an inner journey back to the founding point of the trauma–enables subjective reinscription in the face of contexts of violence and erasure. The article connects Jussara’s individual amnesia to the historical amnesia of slavery in Brazil, materialized in processes such as the burying of the Valongo Wharf, highlighting the persistence of a selective national amnesia. It concludes that the story constructs a poetics of re-enchantment of the world, in which the Cartography of the Ori operates as a symbolic map of resistance, allowing the reconstruction of Black identities in an Afro-diasporic context.