Literatura negra e teoria: cenas de leitura

Abstract

The study of Brazilian Black Literature has raised a number of issues that reach several areas in the literary field. In such interests as its importance to identity studies or the ways in which it relates with Brazilian literature or its placement in the publishing market, the approach to these works seems able to launch new perspectives on knowledge and practices in literary studies, in addition to stimulating theoretical reflections. The essay explores ways in which the universe embraced by the signifier "Black Literature" (the ideia itself of a Black Literature in Brazil, the literary texts under this title and the academic papers about the subject) can get in the discourse of literary studies. Assuming that Brazilian Black Literature is not usually addressed in this way, the hypothesis is that this happens because of some tendency in literary theory to work as a discipline, although it has dissolved its limits by the work of its own presumptions. In this sense, on the one hand Black Literature is presented as a discursive device with which its possible to think the position and operation of theory in literary studies; on the other, the inclusion of the Black Literature in this order of discourse emphasizes aspects of its textuality that are left aside when it is approached from other perspectives. The work performs a reading of the poem "Quebranto", by Cuti and discusses the understanding of the author's status in Black Literature in comparison to well know essays in this matter. "The death of the author", by Roland Barthes and "What is an author?", by Michel Foucault are contrasted with researchs by Benedita Damasceno, Zilá Bernd and Eduardo de Assis Duarte. Other works by Jacques Derrida and Michel strongly influence the methodology of this work.