This research project aims to investigate representations of violence in literary works produced in Portuguese in recent centuries, primarily in dialog with areas of knowledge that also study the proposed theme, such as History and Law. Based on research by Michel Foucault on the microphysics of power, the history of prison,and the mechanisms of Discipline and Punish (1975); Maria Cecília Minayo on Conceitos, teorias e tipologias de violência (Concepts, theories and typologies of violence) (2009), and Pierre Bourdieu on Language and Symbolic Power (1993) and Masculine Domination (2002), among others, we will address some forms of violence represented in fictional works by authors such as Alexandre Herculano, Raul Brandão, José Louzeiro, José Saramago, and Mia Couto. The project is linked to the Research Line “Literature, Theory and History” of the Graduate Program in Letters and Linguistics (PPLIN-UERJ), to the Undergratuate Research under development “O Direito na Literatura e no Cinema” (Law in Literature and Cinema) funded by UERJ (PIBIC-SR2) and to the research groups Nós do Insólito e Literaturas, Artes Visuais e Formação de Professores(Knots of the Unusual and Literatures, Visual Arts, and Teacher Training), certified by UERJ and CNPq.

Coloquei “microphysics of power”como uma referência a um conceito, que vi em publicações em inglês, mas não tem a publicação com esse título.

In traditional Brazilian historiography, naturalism is relegated. It appears as a literature of the interval, situated between two aesthetics considered more authentic and therefore more valued and studied: romanticism and modernism. As a result, naturalism is generally presented as a false and mistaken form of literature. It is false because it was a fashion imported (and already outdated) from France, therefore “foreign” to Brazil; it is mistaken because it mixed art with science. Both the hostility to science and the selection of “national” as a criterion of value are part of the romantic imaginary. It is true that “romantic-modernist”historiography canonized some naturalist works, such as O primo Basílio (Cousin Bazilio) (1878), by Eça de Queirós, and O cortiço (The Tenement) (1890), by Aluísio Azevedo, but the consecration occurs despite the naturalist misconception, which is non-negotiable. In Brazil, dominant writers such as Machado de Assis and José Verissimo imposed on naturalism a robust resistance that was perpetuated in the historiography of the twentieth century. The materiality of naturalistic plots was disconcerting to the literate elite, which is why historiography neglected this production (MENDES, 2014). Relegated and forgotten, the nineteenth-century naturalism is an unknown continent. It is contemporary with the growth of cities, the industrialization of the printing press and the decrease in book prices. Many writers of the late nineteenth century associated themselves with naturalism as a way of claiming the new and the modern. The aim of this project is to continue researching this corpus, identifying forgotten, marginalized or lesser-known naturalist writers and writings or those with less “symbolic capital” (BOURDIEU, 1990). We have abandoned the view of a closed literary history about one territory and treated the nineteenth-century naturalism as a literary manifestation on a transnational scale, capable of producing works from various strands (BAGULEY, 1990) and adapting to different realities in different countries, to the point where it became “une vogue planétaire” (BECKER & DUFIEF, 2018). By conceiving naturalism as a transnational temporality (1870-1920), the research adopts a non-evolutionary point of view that abandons notions dear to traditional historiography, such as “cultural backwardness” and “influence” (CASANOVA, 1999), as well as considers the battles and the balance of power that organize the local and global literary field (BOURDIEU, 1990).

A look at contemporary production allows us to verify the existence of a heterogeneity hardly circumscribed in established periods and genres. We are witnessing the destabilization of the idea of art associated with the values of autonomy and originality and the emergence of hybrid practices that put into tension means and supports. It could be said that the fall of the aura, which began in the 19th century, keeps expanding towards experiences of non-belonging. Reading the contemporary, inhabiting it, seems to require an effort to invent forms; in the case of literature, it establishes dialogs with other arts: the plastic arts, music, cinema, theater, etc. Mutant forms, therefore, which present themselves as literature, can no longer be read solely through literary categories such as “author”, “text”, “style”, “meaning”. Faced with this panorama, which often generates a sensitive and terminological malaise, an emancipated spectator capable of working on an aesthetic experience in the act of reading that goes beyond the description of forms is required, enabling new sharing between what is felt and what is said. Linked to this sharing, there is a game between presence and critical interpretation, between experiencing the literary text and putting it into action in the world. The Project is linked to the Graduate Program in Languages and Linguistics of the School of Teacher Training of UERJ (PPLIN), in Literary Studies, in the Research Line “Literature, Theory, and History”

Gonçalo M. Tavares’ literary project questions the status of the literary, not intending to possibly redefine it, but rather toopen spaces that ensure the possibility of experimentation and inventive capacity that fiction must not give up. From this place of freedom and risk, the author has produced texts of different shades and forms, some close to more traditional genres, others that are hard to classify. His first book, Livro da dança (Book of the Dance), was published in 2001. Composed of a set of fragments, (poems?aphorisms?), it shows the “Project for a poetics of the movement”. We propose to think Livro da Dança as the enunciator of an authorial gesture, moving, dancing, experimental subjectivity, where the one who dances functions as equivalent to the one who writes: do not say I, the one who writes should not say I. The author is an affected body and producer of affects in which act forces triggered by other bodies, other texts, other “mes”; “Não repetir a ideia que cada corpo tem, cada corpo só tem uma ideia,/Não repetir a ideia que cada corpo tem./Deitar o corpo fora depois de cada corpo,/Não repetir o corpo.”(Do not repeat the idea that each body has, each body only has one idea,/Do not repeat the idea that each body has./Lie the body away after each body,/Do not repeat the body. (TAVARES, 2001, p. 59). We can see in Gonçalos’ texts what we might call “variable authorial pacts”, which are texts in which authorship is presented in a more cohesive and stable way, alongside others that are openly permeable to influence, as suggested by the entry “Harold Bloom” in the book Biblioteca (Library): “The only anguish of a sensible man is the anguish of non-influence.” (TAVARES: 2019, p. 63) Being an author of his time does not mean, in the case of Gonçalo M. Tavares, perpetuating the discourse of crisis or endorsing negativity as an intellectual option. Tavares’ poetry is based on a perception of multiple and complex humanity, simultaneously capable of altruism and cruelty, from which the possibility of the new and the event is not excluded. In assuming this position, there is no trace of naivety, but rather an untimely way of inhabiting his time, which brings him closer to the notion of contemporary as thought by Agamben: “he adheres to [his time] and, at the same time, distances himself from it” (AGAMBEN: 2009, p. 59); he perceives the dark under the lights of the present andis it up to the task of transforming it and bringing it into line with other times” (AGAMBEN: 2009, p. 72). At first, the project will focus on a set of texts by the author which include novels and texts belonging to the series O Bairro (The Neighborhood), Enciclopédia (Encyclopedia), and Literatura Bloom (The Bloom Literature). Then, texts by Portuguese authors Almada Negreiros, Fernando Pessoa, Maria Gabriela Llansol, and Vergílio Ferreira will be inserted in the project. Despite differences in style, affective tone and historical moment, these authors show issues related to experimentation with language, hybridization of genres and production of subjectivity that allow approximations with the poetics of Gonçalo M. Tavares. The Project is linked to the Graduate Program in Letters and Linguistics of the Faculty of Teacher Training of UERJ (PPLIN), in Literary Studies, in the Research Line “Literature, Theory, and History”. This line focuses on the study of literature, its theoretical foundations, and historical reconfigurations. Thus, it turns to the currents and movements of literature and literary theory in different eras and to their development and projection in contemporary times. The proposed line of research is integrated by researchers who develop work in Literature from the 19th to the 21st century and other Arts, highlighting interartistic and interdisciplinary dialog.

The project intermedia practices, sensory experiences, and revolutionary narratives

is a Prociência Project in its fifth renewal linked to the area of Literary Studies, within the Literature, Theory and History research line, to the Graduate Program in Letters and Linguistics – PPLIN – of the School of Teacher Training at UERJ, and to the UERJ Graduate Program in Letters (PPGL), in the area of Literary Studies, in the line of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature; to the Research Groups registered with CNPq – Intermídia (Intermedia) (UFMG); Poéticas da Diversidade (Poetics of Divertisy) (UERJ); O passado no presente: Releituras da Modernidade (The past in the present: Re-readings of modernity), (UFF), as well as to the ANPOLL WG Intermidialidade, Leitura Comparada das mídias (Intermediality, Comparative Reading of media). The Prociência Project, with a specific strand, was also awarded a CNPq level 2 research productivity grant and aims to bring to the literary scene how media constitute the compositional diversity of literary and film narratives. It problematizes how the notion of mediality works within the literary text, as understood by Jorgen Bruhn (2020), as well as the proposition of standards for the analysis of relations between media in the material, sensorial, spatio-temporal, and semiotic modalities, formulated by Lars Elleström (2017). By adopting the literary perspective of Intermedialities, I intend to analyze the works that make up the corpus of the research, based on the categories formulated by Irina Rajewsky (2012): medial transposition, media combinations, and intermedial references, in an articulated way and in dialog with Elleström’s media modalities and Bruhn’s mixed media. The corpus of the research will be the works (1) O desmonte do monte (The demolition of the mount), a documentary film by Sinai Sganzerla (2018); O Subterrâneo do Morro do Castelo (The Underground of Morro do Castelo), a book written by Lima Barreto based on the chronicles published from 28/4 to 33/6, in Correio da Manhã, which configure the axis of narrative and narration; paintings by Albert Eckhout and Jean-Baptiste Debret; photographs by Augusto Malta, Marc Ferrez and moving images from the independence centenary in 1922; music (soul with indigenous sounds, African variations and carnival marches, The Clash and Afrobeat); (2) O país de São Saruê (The country of São Saruê), a documentary by Vladimir Carvalho (1971), censored during the military regime and consisting of: the poem O monólogo do sertão (The monologue of the hinterland), the backbone of the film, by Maranhão’s chronicler, essayist and poet Jomar Moraes (1940-2016); cordel literature (the name of the film is inspired by the title of a cordel by the Paraíba poet Manoel Camilo dos Santos (1905-1987); choreographed voice-over poetry; performance; scenes from the life of farmers and prospectors in Rio do Peixe and Catolé do Rocha, in Paraíba; and (3) the novel Crooked Plow, by the writer Itamar Vieira Junior, from Bahia, who tells the story of the sisters Bibiana and Belonísia in the depths of the Bahia hinterlands. Therefore, the intermedia practice adopted proposes a new way of reading, seeing and feeling the expanded narratives in their revolutionary aspect: in other words, it shows the power of literature per se and as an amalgam of hybridization between artistic media, sensory modalities, and stories erased from Brazilian history.

Faced with the new demands for developing competences and skills proposed by the BNCC and interactivity via remote and hybrid model in the post-pandemic, textualizations are intertwined in different ways, juxtaposing genres and media and demanding urgent transformations, with emphasis on new reading experiences focused on various media, supports, and materialities. The growing migration of narratives and the expansion of forms of narrativity and poetic production in recent decades, mobilized by the emergence of new technical means of recording, processing, and transmitting words, sounds, and images, therefore demand a different way of reading, which implies other forms of perception and contact with texts. Such processes contribute to the emergence of intermedial experiences in contemporary literary production; among them, the use of hyperlinks in digital files, verbivocovisual experimentation on the screen, the intersections of poetry, voice, choreographic voiceover and the transcultural condition of literary adaptations for cinema and comic books. The interference of this set in the processes of appropriation, re-reading, and re-writing should also be emphasized. Concerned with the external public in this digital avalanche that benefits and overwhelms people without asking about their economic conditions, techniques or individual choice, the project has a two-fold reach: it contributes both to the development of skills and abilities for integrated reading in different media and languages, and to the understanding of Literature as a literary experience not only under the domain of the intellect, but as a requirement for an intellectual sensitivity (Gumbrecht, 2010), attentive to the various materialities and connections that make up the arts and media. The project will also have the support of German researcher Irina Rajewsky for the literary approach of Intermediality, which impacts the ways of reading and weaving the word-sound-image network in the connected narratives.

This research project aims to investigate the relationships between literature, culture, and society, in an intersectional and decolonial perspective, based on feminist, transfeminist, queer, and gender studies theories. By questioning how the history of sexuality, with its different concepts and modifications, is still reflected today in the socio-cultural environment, valuing the constitution of a cis-heteronormative model of the male subject, we can see the configuration of the imaginary by the stereotypes, instituted by media channels, art, and education, thus forming “behaved” subjectivities and disciplined bodies. By debating, through the bias of intersectionality and decoloniality, the relations of gender, body, and sexualities with other markers of social differences (class, race, ethnicity), colonialism, neocolonialism and the place of hegemonic discursive practices and their asymmetries of power in intergeneric relations, openings are sought, with an important key for reflection, which allows the broadening and understanding of literary critical matter. After all, if in the 1960s Carol Hanisch told us that “the personal is political”, this new generation of feminists makes us understand that the political is personal and that the agenda is collective and horizontal; it is made in presence, in body to body, in occupation and in voice: a feminism that presents itself and is constituted by performativity; a feminism that does not distinguish between theory and practice. In this sense, to think about what feminisms are for is to propose an in-depth problematization of contemporary feminist proposals, both in terms of social changes related to the struggles of cis and trans women, as well as theoretical and critical work aimed at raising awareness of the need for balance and respect for difference and challenging relations of domination, in search of new forms of democracy.

Since the 1980s, studies have reviewed the roles given to categories considered inferior, such as women, black people, and gay people, in reflections on these categories in nations that were colonized. To this knowledge, others have been added, such as Postcolonialism, a broad movement in constant transformation, as Jane Hiddleston understands it in Understanding Postcolonialism (2014), for conveying multiple political, economic, cultural, and philosophical responses to colonialism, in the field of study that announces ethical reflection concerned with the relations between “the self and others”. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, in From the Pandemic to Utopia The Future Begins Now (2023), highlighted social inequalities, resizing the need to reactivate practices of resistance and utopian aspirations that overcome the still present contradiction between civilization and barbarism. We must build a way out for the future of the world by bringing to the scene those who, in colonial history, were excluded, segregated, oppressed, silenced, and denied as barbarians. I believe that Literature collaborates for what Bonaventure called a “realistic utopia” in which the self (the reader) and the other (the literary text) can recognize each other and join together in a network of affections, empathy, and humanities, like a “flight of fireflies”, – to use the happy expression with which Silviano Santiago, having grabbed the expression from the short story “As margens da alegria” (The margins of joy), by Guimarães Rosa, and used it as a title of the last chapter of his book Aos sábados, pela manhã: sobre autores & livros (2013) (On Saturdays, in the morning: about authors & books) – in such difficult and retrogressive times in which we live.

The project investigates the diversity in the presence of authors of Portuguese-speaking African Literature and authors of Brazilian Literature, who deal with the themes of the feminine, the sexual, or the ethnic in the literariness in the works of Vera Duarte, Evel Rocha, Amílcar Cabral, Pepetela, Paulina Chiziane, Lima Barreto, Rita Lee and Luedji Luna. It is associated with the UERJ/CNPq Brazil Cape Verde Research Group: Literature, History and Teaching.

It aims to:

To compare how the tensions between the hegemonic and the counter-hegemonic develop in the theme of diversity in narratives of Brazilian Literature and Cape Verdean Literature, in their specificities of production contexts;

To verify the dialog with gender diversity in its connection with the founding myths of literatures which European colonialism tried to stifle and which, in narrative writing, emerge as points of resistance;

To identify in the (de)construction of genres the perception of diversity, not only in terms of themes, but also of language itself in its supports and forms;

To understand the ethnic diversity of African/Afro-Brazilian myths representing origins and events that have been brought up to date in literary writing, in confrontation with the linear perspective of modernity;

To denounce the physical and psychological violence suffered by women in the historical, political, and social configurations that the narratives engender.

This research project is linked to the Graduate Program in Letters and Linguistics (PPLIN/UERJ) and aims to study contemporary fiction writers, in a comparative perspective, in Brazil and in the world and that are guided by an intense textual hybridity that calls the critical reader to reflect on the exchange of literary and textual genres that underpin our thesis that mathesis, as well-defined by Roland Barthes (1987), is one of the great forces of literature – the strength of knowledge – to demand a utopia of research in which literature, theory, education, and culture are presented as cooperative fields. The authors initially studied will be (1) Bernardo Carvalho, with the novels O filho da mãe and Simpatia pelo demônio (The Son of the Mother and Sympathy for the Devil); (2) Bernardo Kucinski, with his romance K: relato de uma busca (K: Report of a Search), and his novel (Os Visitantes) (The Visitors); (3) Michel Laub, with Diário da queda e A maçã envenenada (The Diary of the Fall and The Poisoned Apple); (4) Chico Buarque, in the novel O irmão alemão (The German Brother; and (5) Milton Hatoum, with the novel A noite da espera (The Wating Night); (6) Paraíso (Paradise), by Tatiana Salem Levy; and (6) Assim na terra como embaixo da terra (So on Earth as under the Earth), by Ana Paula Maia. They will be read, in a comparative bias, whenever possible, in the investigation of the processes of intercultural and cross-cultural exchanges established in the reading of (1) Ways of Going Home, by Alejandro Zambra; (2) Down the Rabbit Hole, by Juan Pablo Villalobos; (3) The Way Out, by Ricardo Piglia and (4) The Emigrants and Austerlitz, by W. G. Sebald. We will problematize, in the set of novels chosen, the antinomies of the globalized world, especially in terms of the tensions between globalization thought of (1) as a fable, (2) as perversity and (3) as a possibility, as proposed by Milton Santos (2002), and the ways in which these contradictions are fictionalized in the works chosen. We will also discuss the forms of representation of war, terrorism, catastrophes, and emblematic interpersonal relationships in times of technological-media imperatives, broadening the scope of research initiated when I joined FFP/UERJ;at this moment, highlighting the relations between fictional representation and history, emphasizing the problem of ethics in a world of citizen-consumers. With this, we intend to expand critical thinking in the field of Literary Theory, consolidating cooperative fields around a poetics of the contemporary Brazilian novel identified with a poetic-world, represented by the foreign authors brought here to debate, showing its importance in the process of teacher training in graduate studies and with exchanges in undergraduate studies.

The project aims to carry out a comparative analysis of contemporary narratives produced by migrant writers from different ethnic groups, focusing on the confluence between mnemonic processes and the literary representation of identity, cultural, and spatial transit. When examining the process of social insertion of the individual who experiences deterritorialization, emphasis will be placed on the implications of the triad of memory, forgetfulness and silence in the new identity configurations resulting from displacement. We will also try to see whether the architecture of the selected texts reproduces the themes developed within the fictional universe. The project is linked to the Research Line “Literature, Theory and History” and to the research group Poéticas da Diversidade(Poetics of Diversity), registered with CNPq.

The research aims to investigate the figurations of the unusual in the works of contemporary authors in Portuguese and English, seeking to verify the extent to which unusual events contribute to the re-reading and re-dimensioning of facts, historical characters, and socio-cultural contexts represented in fiction. In contemporary literature, it is possible to perceive the irruption of the unusual as a narrative construction strategy, involving factors such as the empirical reader’s world knowledge, the existence of potential authors and readers, the imbrication of various textual genres, and intertextual dialog. Thus, we seek to analyze the presence of the unusual in multiple aspects of the fictional narrative linked to it. The literary corpus analyzed will cover works by contemporary authors, but may, however, establish a dialog with works by authors from other literary periods. This project is linked to the CNPq Research Group Nós do Insólito: vertentes da ficção, da teoria e da crítica (Knots of the Unusaul: strands of fiction, theory and criticism).