Description
- Abstract:
- In examining the literary production during the dictatorship, Flora Süssekind notes that the literature of the time, despite its critical gesture against the military regime, dispenses with textual ambiguity: thus, even the fantastic text determines its meaning in an authoritarian way. This essay, however, belies this idea, employing the "engineering metaphor" as a sort of Derridean 'bricolage' to demonstrate how two fantastic tales, José J. Veiga's "The Rooster Impertinent" and Murilo Runbião's "The Building," can overcome the limits of allegorical language. In exploring the impasse between fantastic and rational discourse, one notices how the two tales contain the tools of their own deconstruction. Both engineering projects in the texts reveal fractures that allow doubt as to whether rationality and discontinuity enter history. Engineering, after all, functions as a metaphor for language that unfolds over itself; it is in this Borgian paradoxical territory of the "unlimited and cyclical" library of Babel, without origin or solid base, that the engineer/bricoleur constructs his project. Thus viewed, the tales allow a double reading, in which the richness of the fantastic speech is mined.
- Ao examinar a produção literária durante a ditadura, Flora Süssekind nota que a literatura da época, apesar do gesto crítico contra o regime militar, dispensa a ambigüidade textual: assim, até o texto fantástico determina seu sentido de maneira autoritária. Este ensaio, porém, desmente essa idéia, empregando a "metáfora de engenharia" como espécie de ‘bricolage’ derridaiano para demonstrar como dois contos fantásticos, “O galo impertinente”, de José J. Veiga, e “O edifício”, de Murilo Rubião, conseguem ultrapassar os limites da linguagem alegórica. Ao explorar o impasse entre o discurso fantástico e o discurso racional, nota-se como os dois contos contêm as ferramentas de sua própria desconstrução. Ambos os projetos de engenharia nos dois textos revelam fraturas que permitem a dúvida quanto a o racional e a descontinuidade entrarem na história. A engenharia, afinal de contas, funciona como metáfora da linguagem que se desdobra sobre si; é neste território do paradoxo borgiano da biblioteca de Babel "ilimitada e cíclica", sem origem ou base sólida, que o engenheiro/’bricoleur’ constrói seu projeto. Assim vistos, os contos permitem uma dupla leitura, na qual se mina a riqueza do discurso fantástico.
Citation
Ginway, M. Elizabeth,
"The metaphor of engineering in J.J. Veiga and Murilo Rubião"
(1993).
BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.26300/6137-ff84
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BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature
...BRASIL/BRAZIL: A Journal of Brazilian Literature (ISSN: 2526-4885), founded in 1988, publishes scholarly articles on Brazilian literature and in Comparative Literature with a focus on Brazilian literature, as well as book reviews, interviews with writers, English-language translations of Brazilian literature …