Narrativas do lugar no romance Torto Arado: a busca pelo “Brasil profundo” a partir da representação geográfica na literatura.

Abstract

Works of art mention concepts that are relevant to Geography, such as space, territory, landscape and place. Therefore, this work sought to analyze the narratives that represent place in the novel Torto Arado by writer Itamar Vieira Junior, based on the characters Bibiana, Belonísia and Santa Rita Pescadeira, based on the concept of geography (“geograficidade”), approached by geographer Eric Dardel. These reflections were influenced by the methods of Phenomenology and Dialectics, drawing mainly on the currents of Cultural-Humanistic Geography and Critical Geography. The research techniques were based on indirect documentation of themes involving the work under analysis, as well as studies focused on the field of Cultural-Humanistic Geography and the “trajectory” of the “construction” of the concept of place over the course of the evolution of geographical science. In recent decades, work involving the dialog between Geography and Art, especially geographical content in literary works (Monteiro, 2002), has gained a lot of notoriety in Brazil. To this end, we consulted some of the main authors who deal with the subject in order to provide a theoretical basis. In addition to analyzing these representations, this research also addresses the place in meaning, as a position in society, by emphasizing the erasure/silencing of the contribution of literature produced by black authors, such as Carolina Maria de Jesus. However, in the face of some public policies aimed at the issue of black people in Brazil, and in the midst of a political, ethical and moral crisis that has pervaded the last few decades, Torto Arado emerges as a philosophical, historical, sociological and geographical “manual” that reflects the constitution of the formation of Brazil. An extremely unequal country, “bent” in the face of so many perversities. The “deep Brazil” represented through the narratives presented in Torto Arado shows the place(s) constituted by the “slow men” (poverty, servitude, racism, machismo, denial of rights, among others), addressed by geographer Milton Santos (1994b), but which also reveals the revenge of places (Araújo, 2020) from the resistance (social movements, religious practices, female protagonism, among others) that are inserted in these spaces. In other words, Torto Arado, although a fiction, is a representation of a “deep Brazil” marked by socio-spatial problems that are still far from being resolved.