The aporia of trauma and the writing of resistance

the past that doesn’t pass in O corpo interminável, by Claudia Lage

Abstract

This work is the result of the need to reflect on fictional narrative paths and resistance in the face of historical trauma and forgetfulness related to the military dictatorship in Brazil. This appreciation has as sample the work O corpo interminável (2019), by Claudia Lage, whose characters are inserted in the scope of barbarism and state violence. In an attempt to reach experiences that were extorted by political authoritarianism, the novel presents the search for lives and histories silenced due to the years of barbarism imposed by the Brazilian military dictatorship. Alternating narrative voices and historical times, the notion of a past that is still present and that, immersed in secrecy and oblivion, remains marked by absences, voids, inaccuracies, gaps, and fractured memories. We propose the mobilization of fictional narrative as an instrument of reconstruction of the debris of this past, in the struggle to prevent the same violations from being repeated in the present. The intention of this reading is to contribute to the political and aesthetic characterization of the novel, because, by exploring the narrative strategies in O corpo interminável, it is hoped to discuss the relevance and essentiality of contemporary Brazilian literature in the process of recovering a dark past. As a theoretical-critical basis, the considerations of Dalcastagnè (2017), Figueiredo (2017), Ginzburg (2000 and 2017), Seligmann-Silva (2003, 2008 and 2016), among others, will be used.