This paper deals with the power of invention from a reflection on the narrative content of the novel All the names (SARAMAGO, 1997): a bureaucratic system of classifications that validates the official existence of citizens, their hierarchies and the invention and the transgression of a subject. It develops here something about a quest for autonomy that starts by contextualizing the character of Mr. José initially as submissive to hierarchies, but also as one that later moves to displacements that enable him to other ways of being against the controls imposed. We note that the imaginary is beyond the reach of capture and control laws and that the inventive experiments reorganize the perceptual structures of the subjects; thus inventing becomes a function of nature in favor of the desire for creation and the desire to accomplish what is amazing about human beings when he/she is released from the shame and labels. To this argument the main contributing authors are Costa (2012) and Foucault (1998, 2011). This article is part of an ongoing investigation on the poetic in a master’s degree research on Visual Arts; as a whole this research is not intended to be purely analytical, illustrative or translational of Saramago’s work, but a way to enhance and reframe its narrative content through the visual arts
