Violence, Trauma and Reorientation

In Slow Motion, by Renato Tapajós

Abstract

This article analyzes the novel Em Câmera lenta (1977), by Renato Tapajós, as one of the first literary expressions of the political violence and collective trauma caused by the Brazilian military dictatorship. With a fragmentary structure and marked by recurring images and cinematic language, the narrative stages the impossibility of fully elaborating the traumatic experience. Dialoguing with concepts such as “fierce realism” (Candido) and “trauma literature” (Seligmann-Silva), the work articulates memory, testimony and critique of the armed struggle, pointing to an ideological reorientation of left-wing militancy in the 1970s. At once a document and a denunciation, the novel contributes to the construction of a critical memory of state violence in Brazil.