Where everything writes, the author is “a whole other thing”

collectively authored indigenous literature in Brazil

Abstract

The structuralist movement, driven by a critique of certain Western values, sought to rethink the notion of author that was dominant in literary studies until the mid-20th century. It is known that this movement successfully and lastingly displaced the notion of authorship. However, it is worth noting that these theoretical formulations were developed mainly based on a mode of production and reception of texts that disregards the writing produced by indigenous peoples. In this paper, on the other hand, we compare Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s thought about authorship with the indigenous literature of collective authorship produced in Brazil – more specifically, the Huni Kuĩ and Xakriabá literature – with a view to questioning important assumptions of literary theory of European origin. As a methodological procedure, we also evoke critical and theoretical works by Brazilian thinkers, such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and Maria Inês de Almeida, both scholars of Amerindian thought and poetics. It will be seen that community authorship, the recording of orality and a singular relationship with meaning invite us to think of collectively authored indigenous literature as a dissent from important notions of authorship produced in Western literary theory, especially with regard to individualism and humanism.