Developments in the Fictional Construction of António Lobo Antunes

From Power to Silence

Abstract

António Lobo Antunes’ narrative form constructs representations of the other through discursive fragmentation, the instability of enunciative foci, and the recurrent experience of silence. This article examines how this process is configured in the novels O manual dos inquisidores (1998) and Que cavalos são aqueles que fazem sombra no mar (2009) and argues that, in these works, alterity is not only presented as a theme or narrative content, but also emerges formally from the very organization of the text, which compromises the centrality of the narration, and strains the boundaries between speech, listening, and the incommunicability of enunciation. The study adopts an approach situated in the analysis of narrative form and the attentive reading of passages from the selected novels, in dialogue with Jacques Rancière’s reflections (2009a; 2009b) on the politics of writing and the sharing of the sensible. The analysis demonstrates that procedures such as stream of consciousness, overlapping voices, and temporal discontinuity produce effects of silencing, symbolic exclusion, and unequal redistribution of the word within family and social relationships. The work concludes that Antunes’ fictional form plays a critical role in the elaboration of representations of the other, by highlighting the impasses of communication and the persistent effects of power in Portuguese-language literatures.