Weaving the Voices of Healing

uma leitura de Desterros: histórias de um hospital-prisão, de Natalia Timerman

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate the narrative voices present in two female characters in the work Desterros: histórias de um hospital prisão, by Natália Timerman (2017) in light of the theoretical-methodological perspective of Patrick Charaudeau’s Semiolinguistic Discourse Analysis (1992, 2008), especially with regard to narrative staging, articulated with studies on ancestry (Martins, 2021) and studies on prison space, especially Borges’ mass incarceration (2019) and Davis’ studies (2018), which point to incarceration as punishment. In addition to these studies, the investigation also includes studies on presence, by Gumbrecht (2010), ideas on punitivism evoked by Foucault, in Discipline and Punish (1987) and the gaze of the self as other, by Paul Ricoeur (2014). From a qualitative perspective of the discourse of the narrative voices evoked by the subjects selected in the corpus, we start from the assumption that, since the incarcerated subject does not have his freedom assured in the prison space, it is necessary to ensure his right to healing – real and symbolic – and transformation. The results demonstrate that the narrator subject forged by Timerman, in the enunciative-discursive space, constructs an interweaving of voices that places the two female characters in an amalgam from which the process of healing and self-transformation takes place.