Alessandro Zir | Dalhousie University (original) (raw)
Papers by Alessandro Zir
Revista Triplov, 2021
Num apanhado recente das posições surgidas no âmbito da crítica literária brasileira quanto à inf... more Num apanhado recente das posições surgidas no âmbito da crítica literária brasileira quanto à influência de Baudelaire na nossa poesia, Eduardo Horta Nassif Veras tende a destacar em primeiro lugar autores como Cruz e Sousa e Augusto dos Anjos. 3 Se de fato for essa a conclusão a ser inferida de uma série de trabalhos que começam com "A nova geração" de Machado de Assis, chegando aos estudos bem posteriores de Antonio Candido e Roger Bastide, somos obrigados a nos perguntar como veio a se estabelecer uma perspectiva de leitura tão deficitária.
Revista Triplov, 2021
Baudelaire teve de se acertar com leitores a quem a leitura de poesia lírica apresentava dificuld... more Baudelaire teve de se acertar com leitores a quem a leitura de poesia lírica apresentava dificuldades. O poema introdutório de Fleurs du Mal é voltado a esses leitores. Com a força de vontade deles bem como com o poder que tinham de concentração não se chega muito longe; dão preferência à satisfação sensual; eles apostam no spleen, que se vê livre do interesse e da receptividade. É inesperado deparar-se com um poeta lírico que se detém diante de um tal público, o mais ingrato. É claro que é fácil achar uma explicação. Baudelaire queria ser compreendido: ele dedica seu livro àqueles que com ele são parecidos. O poema ao leitor encerra-se com a apóstrofe: "Leitor hipócrita — meu semelhante — meu irmão!" O que está aqui em jogo revela-se mais vivamente quando se reformula e diz: Baudelaire escreveu um livro que desde o início tinha pouca possibilidade de alcançar um sucesso de público imediato. Ele contava com um tipo de público como o descrito no poema introdutório. E aconteceu disso vir a ser um cálculo de largo alcance. O leitor que ele veio a encontrar lhe foi fornecido pela época seguinte.
Revista Épicas , 2021
In emblematic works of Brazilian literature, one finds significant traces of approaches to realit... more In emblematic works of Brazilian literature, one finds significant traces of approaches to reality that gained prominence in anthropology as important alternatives to modern naturalism. One of these approaches is Amerindian perspectivism, the other we will here call "analogism", with reference to one of the central axes of Philippe Descola's quadripartite structural typology — a recent attempt to construct a synthesis in anthropology through a critical reassessment of Lévi-Strauss. We will start by presenting Descola's typology (with emphasis on the issue of analogism) and Amerindian Perspectivism, also included in it, so that we can proceed to analyze, with the help of these categories, Sousa Andrade's Guesa and Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma. Just by itself, Amerindian perspectivism is a prominent current in the ethnographic studies of the last decades, directly connected to the autochthonous cultures of Amazonia. The identification of a significant concurrence between perspectivism and analogism in Brazilian literature is an original investigative hypothesis proposed by us. Through this hypothesis we seek to highlight certain peculiarities of Brazilian literature against the broader horizon of Latin-American culture in its global context, thus also continuing an endeavor in cultural criticism originally pursued by the concretist poets, in particular Haroldo de Campos.
Caleste Natário, Cícero Cunha Bezerra e Renato Epifânio (Orgs.), Clarice Lispector: Filosofia e Literatura. Porto: Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto., 2021
Since the publication of her first book in 1944, critics felt compelled to link Clarice Lispector... more Since the publication of her first book in 1944, critics felt compelled to link Clarice Lispector to the tradition of "experimental" or avant-garde novel in Brazil, confronting her production with emblematic works by Oswald and Mário de Andrade (and later on, Guimarães Rosa). We will rescue critically this trajectory, taking as a watershed some ideas expressed by Haroldo de Campos and the work of Olga de Sá, which was oriented by him in the late seventies. We will point out, on the other hand, in two earlier more celebrated approaches to Clarice's work, those of Antônio Cândido and Benedito Nunes, significant mistakes which are due to deficiencies in their analytic framework. These deficiencies persist (although in the opposite direction) in other more contemporary approaches, such as that of Evando Nascimento. We recognize the legitimacy of attempts such as to recover Clarice's Jewish roots, especially when properly contextualized. Otherwise, one overlooks the writer's real significance in relation to our own literature and the most innovative currents in Western literature, which have gained strength specially since the end of the 19th century: from Sterne and Henri James to Virginia Woolf and Joyce, from Nerval to Marcel Proust and Beckett.
Revista Metalinguagens , 2020
We depart from the concrete testimony of a personal experience in interdisciplinary research, unl... more We depart from the concrete testimony of a personal experience in interdisciplinary research, unlfoded in a relatively emblematic context of an actual academic environment. This gives us elements for the diagnostic of restrains compromising current work in universities: sectarianism and (in the case of human sciences) the strict incumbency of diffident historicist and psychologizing paradigms ruling arbitrarily and over the analysis of cultural phenomena. To get out of this impasse, we propose the resumption of broad comparative perspectives, such as to be found in Lévi-Strauss' structuralism, and of sui generis conceptions of fantasy and imagination that were developed in the Occident during the high middle ages. We underline the unexpected current relevance of the latter even to avant-garde approaches like "deconstruction."
Marburg Journal of Religion (Vol. 2, No. 2), 2020
The corpus of the Luso-Brazilian 1 encounters of the 16th-century was written at a time when both... more The corpus of the Luso-Brazilian 1 encounters of the 16th-century was written at a time when both globalization and modern sciences were germinating. But it did not exactly foster what could be called a modern scientific approach to the empirical aspects of the New World's fauna, flora, and people. Their undertone is more literary and religious (Zir 2009, 2011, 2017). While arriving in Brazil and colonizing the country, the Portuguese were concerned with a relation between ordinary things and some partially hidden, never entirely manifested source-a source that would constantly maintain the existence and stability of these things, while at the same time overflowing them. In order to address this source the Portuguese used three methodological strategies: a very bold use of analogy, the blurring of the distinction between words and things, and the blurring of the distinction between feigned and ordinary reality (or poetical imitation) (Zir 2011: 51-64; Zir 2009: 164-198). The style of thinking in question should be called para-scientific for the reasons I give below.
Martin Heidegger e Hannah Arendt no seu tempo – e no nosso, Kathrin Rosenfield; Felipe Gonçalves Silva (Orgs.), 2019
The precariousness and vulnerability of community ties, in their relation to a mother tongue and ... more The precariousness and vulnerability of community ties, in their relation to a mother tongue and madness, is an issue that runs through the work of several modern writers, male and female, of different nationalities; in the works of Joyce and Marguerite Duras language itself is deeply challenged as a means for the symbolization of (inter)subjective experiences. The work of Hanna Arendt, on the other hand, in its most distinctive and innovative features, calls for an explicit recognition of the eminently political dimension of these problems underlying community ties, in order to grant a permanent space for the expression of alterity, heterogeneity and cosmopolitan values in contraposition to regressive cultural trends. Grounding itself in Julia Kristeva's reading of Arendt's work, this essay aims at outlining aporias emerging in the crossroad of both paths: how literary experiences (the most dashing) assume the risk and might imply the alienation of the writer with respect to himself and others, while engagement in the active life requires one occasionally to suspend and even to conceal mechanisms which are intrinsic to the psychic apparatus of human beings, such as (in psychoanalytic terms, mostly Kleinean) sadomasochistic drives and cleavages of the self.
Brasil/Brazil: A Journal of Brazilian Literature , 2017
This essay discusses the process of identity construction in two novels of Chico Buarque, the cel... more This essay discusses the process of identity construction in two novels of Chico Buarque, the celebrated Brazilian songwriter and popular singer from the 1960s. This is done with the help of Gilles Deleuze's concept of contracting contemplation, which is also related to semiotic ideas of authors such as Umberto Eco and Julia Kristeva. Buarque's novels are relatively recent ones, won literary prizes in Brazil, and have been translated worldwide. The first deals with the topic of biography and ghost writing, and the second is a fictional memoir.
Republics of Letters (Stanford University), 2017
The seventeenth-century debate about the origin of the American Indians was highly controversial ... more The seventeenth-century debate about the origin of the American Indians was highly controversial and led to the formulation of theories whose premises are complex and idiosyncratic. This is the case with the theory about the origin of the Brazilian Indians developed by the Portuguese colonizer Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão in his Diálogos das Grandezas do Brasil (1618). This essay argues that although many of Brandão’s arguments have scientific relevance, the significance of his theory as a whole is not scientific. The essay shows how much Iberian natural history dissents from rather than converges with the Scientific Revolution. Brandão’s theory connected the Indians to the lost tribes of Israel, and was entangled with Jewish prophetical speculations about the reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple and the coming of the Messiah. These ideas strongly determined the way Brandão pictured not only the Indians (their “physiology” and language) but also Brazilian climate and vegetation.
Scripta Uniandrade, 2017
This paper relies on and furthers a hypothesis advanced in previous research: that the well-known... more This paper relies on and furthers a hypothesis advanced in previous research: that the well-known eccentricities to be found in the early-modern corpus of the Portuguese colonizers of Brazil — its references to entities like monsters and demons, its bizarre descriptions, and odd classification systems — can be explained in view of a certain style of thinking, addressing a specific ontological concern. Ontology emerges here as a structural differentiating factor between radically distinct kinds of approach to reality, and the notions of excess and metonymy helps us to characterize the specificity of a cognitive enterprise which, in its several manifestations, is rather literary-religious than scientific-empirical. Our perspective is critical and theoretical, grounded on both perennial and contemporary discussions such as renaissance Christian Neoplatonism and poststructuralist thinking. And it covers significantly visual culture, which helps us to present Brazilian colonial literature on a broad canvas.
Língua Portuguesa: Unidade na Diversidade, 2016
This paper begins by briefly reconsidering a previous analysis of medieval Galician-Portuguese po... more This paper begins by briefly reconsidering a previous analysis of medieval Galician-Portuguese poetry, in order to clarify the relation there is between deconstruction and a certain kind of literary production. The relation is transhistorical. The paper focuses on literary works that generate defamiliarization, troubling notions of identity in the very contexts these notions emerge. General criteria governing those literary works are then proposed with the help of theoretical ideas advanced by the Brazilian concrete poets. Finally Sousa Andrade and José de Alencar (Iracema) are presented as critical examples of the kind of literary production we are here interested in.
Mediations of Disruption in Post-Conflict Cinema - Mónica Dias, Alexandra Lopes, Adriana Martins (Orgs.) (London: Palgrave-Macmillan), 2016
[*****ERRATA list for “Narrative Outbreak in Contemporary Conflict Cinema: A Case Study of Steve ... more [*****ERRATA list for “Narrative Outbreak in Contemporary Conflict Cinema: A Case Study of Steve McQueen’s Hunger”, Mediations of Disruption in Post-Conflict Cinema (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016), 145-56. This essay was published with several minor/lethal changes in the text done without the author’s consent or acknowledgement. The original version of the essay follows the errata list.]
The actual trust of a conflict movie such as Steve McQueen’s Hunger (IE, GB, 2008) is not a political narrative or counter-narrative, but the structural tension in a series of intense, harsh and aggressive sounds followed by silence. In Hunger we see a process of emancipation of indicial (visual and audio) elements in relation to their narrative function. The process is a deconstruction—an outbreak against the conceptual unity of the movie, which enables the emergence of fragmentary, non-subjective ontological issues that are fundamental to aesthetic experience beyond its merely psychological and social dimensions. The paper starts with a theoretical discussion relying in authors such as Gilles Deleuze, André Bazin and Michel Chion, and shows the relevance of this deconstructive ontological perspective in cinema studies.
Boitatá, 2015
This essay considers some gender issues that emerge in the context of medieval poetry, more speci... more This essay considers some gender issues that emerge in the context of medieval poetry, more specifically in the context of the Galego-Portuguese cantigas de amigo. By discussing different theoretical perspectives and analyzing concrete passages of three cantigas, the essay points out to the deconstructive potential of this poetry, no matter its undeniable traditional features. This is not a philological neither a comparative work. Poetry has something which is irreducible to the context of its production. This is our focus.
Acta Scientiarum: Language and Culture, 2015
The significance of negativity as a way for conceptual determination in Hegelian dialectics is we... more The significance of negativity as a way for conceptual determination in Hegelian dialectics is well known. Authors such as Gilles Deleuze have underlined, on the other hand, how this notion of (dialectical) negativity is incompatible with a Nietzschean perspective of interplay of forces and affirmation of difference. There is here a real distension (rather than a distinction)—a fissure enabling one to think what connects and inevitably dissociates rationalistic and deconstructive philosophical perspectives on language. In this fissure, it is constituted, for instance, the space of dispersion of the so-called Foucauldian statements (énoncés), the focus of his archeology. This essay addresses the context in which the Foucauldian notion of énoncé emerges. It does so by criticizing first the dialectical notion of negativity. It then considers some semiological notions used by post-structuralist authors, such as plethora of signs and floating signifier. In a third moment, examples are taken from a literary work, Vitor Ramil's Pequod, in order to illustrate more concretely our discussion.
Acta Scientiarum, 2015
The significance of negativity as a way for conceptual determination in Hegelian dialectics is we... more The significance of negativity as a way for conceptual determination in Hegelian dialectics is well-known. Authors such as Gilles Deleuze have underlined, on the other hand, how this notion of (dialectical) negativity is incompatible with a Nietzschean perspective of interplay of forces and affirmation of difference. There is here a real distension (rather than a distinction) — a fissure enabling one to think what connects and inevitably dissociates rationalistic and deconstructive philosophical perspectives on language. In this fissure it is constituted, for instance, the space of dispersion of the so-called Foucaultian statements (énoncés), the focus of his archeology. This essay addresses the context in which the Foucaultian notion of énoncé emerges. It does so by criticizing first the dialectical notion of negativity. It then considers some semiological notions used by post-structuralist authors, such as plethora of signs and floating signifier. In a third moment, examples are taken from a literary work, Vitor Ramil’s Pequod, in order to illustrate more concretely our discussion.
Joint Annual Conference of the Society for European Philosophy and the Forum for European Philosophy Annual Conference ("Philosophy After Nature", Utrecht University), 2014
Given the fact that humans, microorganisms and inanimate beings are all in the end governed by si... more Given the fact that humans, microorganisms and inanimate beings are all in the end governed by similar kinds of merely stochastic laws, what does make up for consciousness, if not the insidious space that articulate them? Ideas such as this are discussed here through the notion of a continuum between human and natural phenomena, inserted in a panorama consisting of a bricolage of literary and cinematographic images typical of the turn of the century (1900). By doing so, this paper furthers some implications of the concept of “interactive kinds,” coined by the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking. The argumentation relies on approaches coming from post-structuralist thinking (such as Deleuze's understanding of differentiation), Modern mathematics and literary theory (Maurice Blanchot's reading of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw in particular, and Jakobson's concept of shifter).
PANOPTIKUM, 2013
This essay brings forward and analyzes some constitutive elements of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist ... more This essay brings forward and analyzes some constitutive elements of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist that enable an understanding of its alleged morbidity and misogyny in terms of the sovereignty of aesthetic experience and its relation to the problem of cultural nihilism. These elements are the followings: the juxtaposition of horror and lyricism, and a corresponding archaic understanding of nature; the disengagement of visual and audio elements from their narrative function, and a corresponding deconstruction of the representational character of the movie itself.
Revista Universitária do Audiovisual, 2012
, cotejado com o livro que lhe teria servido de inspiração. Parte-se da ideia do sexo como simula... more , cotejado com o livro que lhe teria servido de inspiração. Parte-se da ideia do sexo como simulacro sedutor a serviço de um programa ascético de escrita. Tal programa dá origem ao fenômeno Bruna Surfistinha, como duplo subjetivo, efetivado no livro e até certo ponto desmascarado no filme. Conclui-se com um desvelamento da escrita pela imagem, suja, opaca, que não se mostra (nem no filme) -fundo irredutível, negativo, de onde a história se projeta. Palavras-chave: escrita, tecnologia, imagem, simulacro, duplo
Revista de Estudos Feministas, 2012
Loki é um documentário produzido pelo Canal Brasil sobre o músico e compositor Arnaldo Dias Bapti... more Loki é um documentário produzido pelo Canal Brasil sobre o músico e compositor Arnaldo Dias Baptista, nascido em São Paulo, e que junto com o seu irmão Sérgio e Rita Lee criaram o conjunto brasileiro de rock Os Mutantes na década de 1960. O filme resgata a carreira de Arnaldo desde esse período inicial até o momento recente, em que, depois de cair no esquecimento, e ser de certa forma marginalizado, seu trabalho vem sendo reconhecido principalmente no exterior como um dos mais originais e inovadores no cenário do rock mundial. O documentário de Fontenelle vale não apenas pelo resgate em âmbito nacional desse reconhecimento mais amplo, mas sobretudo pelo arranjo inteligente e sensível de depoimentos do próprio Arnaldo, de colegas de trabalho, amigos e críticos, dos quais se vale esse ensaio.
artciencia-com, 2012
A discussão proposta resgata elementos que permitiriam uma abordagem da obra de Francisco Candido... more A discussão proposta resgata elementos que permitiriam uma abordagem da obra de Francisco Candido Xavier enquanto fenômeno de escrita, e até mesmo de escrita literária. Tal resgate é feito a partir de uma análise crítica da cinebiografia do psicógrafo mineiro, realizada por Daniel Filho. Busca-se apontar para elementos substanciais, de uma ordem ficcional, que seriam constitutivos tanto do filme quanto do trabalho do "escritor" cuja vida o filme retrata. A fim de alcançar tal resultado, confronta-se a cinebiografia com a biografia em que supostamente é baseada, e com uma das obras chaves de Xavier. No caminho, retomam-se noções desenvolvidas por Maurice Blanchot a respeito do processo de criação literária.
Revista Triplov, 2021
Num apanhado recente das posições surgidas no âmbito da crítica literária brasileira quanto à inf... more Num apanhado recente das posições surgidas no âmbito da crítica literária brasileira quanto à influência de Baudelaire na nossa poesia, Eduardo Horta Nassif Veras tende a destacar em primeiro lugar autores como Cruz e Sousa e Augusto dos Anjos. 3 Se de fato for essa a conclusão a ser inferida de uma série de trabalhos que começam com "A nova geração" de Machado de Assis, chegando aos estudos bem posteriores de Antonio Candido e Roger Bastide, somos obrigados a nos perguntar como veio a se estabelecer uma perspectiva de leitura tão deficitária.
Revista Triplov, 2021
Baudelaire teve de se acertar com leitores a quem a leitura de poesia lírica apresentava dificuld... more Baudelaire teve de se acertar com leitores a quem a leitura de poesia lírica apresentava dificuldades. O poema introdutório de Fleurs du Mal é voltado a esses leitores. Com a força de vontade deles bem como com o poder que tinham de concentração não se chega muito longe; dão preferência à satisfação sensual; eles apostam no spleen, que se vê livre do interesse e da receptividade. É inesperado deparar-se com um poeta lírico que se detém diante de um tal público, o mais ingrato. É claro que é fácil achar uma explicação. Baudelaire queria ser compreendido: ele dedica seu livro àqueles que com ele são parecidos. O poema ao leitor encerra-se com a apóstrofe: "Leitor hipócrita — meu semelhante — meu irmão!" O que está aqui em jogo revela-se mais vivamente quando se reformula e diz: Baudelaire escreveu um livro que desde o início tinha pouca possibilidade de alcançar um sucesso de público imediato. Ele contava com um tipo de público como o descrito no poema introdutório. E aconteceu disso vir a ser um cálculo de largo alcance. O leitor que ele veio a encontrar lhe foi fornecido pela época seguinte.
Revista Épicas , 2021
In emblematic works of Brazilian literature, one finds significant traces of approaches to realit... more In emblematic works of Brazilian literature, one finds significant traces of approaches to reality that gained prominence in anthropology as important alternatives to modern naturalism. One of these approaches is Amerindian perspectivism, the other we will here call "analogism", with reference to one of the central axes of Philippe Descola's quadripartite structural typology — a recent attempt to construct a synthesis in anthropology through a critical reassessment of Lévi-Strauss. We will start by presenting Descola's typology (with emphasis on the issue of analogism) and Amerindian Perspectivism, also included in it, so that we can proceed to analyze, with the help of these categories, Sousa Andrade's Guesa and Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma. Just by itself, Amerindian perspectivism is a prominent current in the ethnographic studies of the last decades, directly connected to the autochthonous cultures of Amazonia. The identification of a significant concurrence between perspectivism and analogism in Brazilian literature is an original investigative hypothesis proposed by us. Through this hypothesis we seek to highlight certain peculiarities of Brazilian literature against the broader horizon of Latin-American culture in its global context, thus also continuing an endeavor in cultural criticism originally pursued by the concretist poets, in particular Haroldo de Campos.
Caleste Natário, Cícero Cunha Bezerra e Renato Epifânio (Orgs.), Clarice Lispector: Filosofia e Literatura. Porto: Instituto de Filosofia da Universidade do Porto., 2021
Since the publication of her first book in 1944, critics felt compelled to link Clarice Lispector... more Since the publication of her first book in 1944, critics felt compelled to link Clarice Lispector to the tradition of "experimental" or avant-garde novel in Brazil, confronting her production with emblematic works by Oswald and Mário de Andrade (and later on, Guimarães Rosa). We will rescue critically this trajectory, taking as a watershed some ideas expressed by Haroldo de Campos and the work of Olga de Sá, which was oriented by him in the late seventies. We will point out, on the other hand, in two earlier more celebrated approaches to Clarice's work, those of Antônio Cândido and Benedito Nunes, significant mistakes which are due to deficiencies in their analytic framework. These deficiencies persist (although in the opposite direction) in other more contemporary approaches, such as that of Evando Nascimento. We recognize the legitimacy of attempts such as to recover Clarice's Jewish roots, especially when properly contextualized. Otherwise, one overlooks the writer's real significance in relation to our own literature and the most innovative currents in Western literature, which have gained strength specially since the end of the 19th century: from Sterne and Henri James to Virginia Woolf and Joyce, from Nerval to Marcel Proust and Beckett.
Revista Metalinguagens , 2020
We depart from the concrete testimony of a personal experience in interdisciplinary research, unl... more We depart from the concrete testimony of a personal experience in interdisciplinary research, unlfoded in a relatively emblematic context of an actual academic environment. This gives us elements for the diagnostic of restrains compromising current work in universities: sectarianism and (in the case of human sciences) the strict incumbency of diffident historicist and psychologizing paradigms ruling arbitrarily and over the analysis of cultural phenomena. To get out of this impasse, we propose the resumption of broad comparative perspectives, such as to be found in Lévi-Strauss' structuralism, and of sui generis conceptions of fantasy and imagination that were developed in the Occident during the high middle ages. We underline the unexpected current relevance of the latter even to avant-garde approaches like "deconstruction."
Marburg Journal of Religion (Vol. 2, No. 2), 2020
The corpus of the Luso-Brazilian 1 encounters of the 16th-century was written at a time when both... more The corpus of the Luso-Brazilian 1 encounters of the 16th-century was written at a time when both globalization and modern sciences were germinating. But it did not exactly foster what could be called a modern scientific approach to the empirical aspects of the New World's fauna, flora, and people. Their undertone is more literary and religious (Zir 2009, 2011, 2017). While arriving in Brazil and colonizing the country, the Portuguese were concerned with a relation between ordinary things and some partially hidden, never entirely manifested source-a source that would constantly maintain the existence and stability of these things, while at the same time overflowing them. In order to address this source the Portuguese used three methodological strategies: a very bold use of analogy, the blurring of the distinction between words and things, and the blurring of the distinction between feigned and ordinary reality (or poetical imitation) (Zir 2011: 51-64; Zir 2009: 164-198). The style of thinking in question should be called para-scientific for the reasons I give below.
Martin Heidegger e Hannah Arendt no seu tempo – e no nosso, Kathrin Rosenfield; Felipe Gonçalves Silva (Orgs.), 2019
The precariousness and vulnerability of community ties, in their relation to a mother tongue and ... more The precariousness and vulnerability of community ties, in their relation to a mother tongue and madness, is an issue that runs through the work of several modern writers, male and female, of different nationalities; in the works of Joyce and Marguerite Duras language itself is deeply challenged as a means for the symbolization of (inter)subjective experiences. The work of Hanna Arendt, on the other hand, in its most distinctive and innovative features, calls for an explicit recognition of the eminently political dimension of these problems underlying community ties, in order to grant a permanent space for the expression of alterity, heterogeneity and cosmopolitan values in contraposition to regressive cultural trends. Grounding itself in Julia Kristeva's reading of Arendt's work, this essay aims at outlining aporias emerging in the crossroad of both paths: how literary experiences (the most dashing) assume the risk and might imply the alienation of the writer with respect to himself and others, while engagement in the active life requires one occasionally to suspend and even to conceal mechanisms which are intrinsic to the psychic apparatus of human beings, such as (in psychoanalytic terms, mostly Kleinean) sadomasochistic drives and cleavages of the self.
Brasil/Brazil: A Journal of Brazilian Literature , 2017
This essay discusses the process of identity construction in two novels of Chico Buarque, the cel... more This essay discusses the process of identity construction in two novels of Chico Buarque, the celebrated Brazilian songwriter and popular singer from the 1960s. This is done with the help of Gilles Deleuze's concept of contracting contemplation, which is also related to semiotic ideas of authors such as Umberto Eco and Julia Kristeva. Buarque's novels are relatively recent ones, won literary prizes in Brazil, and have been translated worldwide. The first deals with the topic of biography and ghost writing, and the second is a fictional memoir.
Republics of Letters (Stanford University), 2017
The seventeenth-century debate about the origin of the American Indians was highly controversial ... more The seventeenth-century debate about the origin of the American Indians was highly controversial and led to the formulation of theories whose premises are complex and idiosyncratic. This is the case with the theory about the origin of the Brazilian Indians developed by the Portuguese colonizer Ambrósio Fernandes Brandão in his Diálogos das Grandezas do Brasil (1618). This essay argues that although many of Brandão’s arguments have scientific relevance, the significance of his theory as a whole is not scientific. The essay shows how much Iberian natural history dissents from rather than converges with the Scientific Revolution. Brandão’s theory connected the Indians to the lost tribes of Israel, and was entangled with Jewish prophetical speculations about the reconstruction of Solomon’s Temple and the coming of the Messiah. These ideas strongly determined the way Brandão pictured not only the Indians (their “physiology” and language) but also Brazilian climate and vegetation.
Scripta Uniandrade, 2017
This paper relies on and furthers a hypothesis advanced in previous research: that the well-known... more This paper relies on and furthers a hypothesis advanced in previous research: that the well-known eccentricities to be found in the early-modern corpus of the Portuguese colonizers of Brazil — its references to entities like monsters and demons, its bizarre descriptions, and odd classification systems — can be explained in view of a certain style of thinking, addressing a specific ontological concern. Ontology emerges here as a structural differentiating factor between radically distinct kinds of approach to reality, and the notions of excess and metonymy helps us to characterize the specificity of a cognitive enterprise which, in its several manifestations, is rather literary-religious than scientific-empirical. Our perspective is critical and theoretical, grounded on both perennial and contemporary discussions such as renaissance Christian Neoplatonism and poststructuralist thinking. And it covers significantly visual culture, which helps us to present Brazilian colonial literature on a broad canvas.
Língua Portuguesa: Unidade na Diversidade, 2016
This paper begins by briefly reconsidering a previous analysis of medieval Galician-Portuguese po... more This paper begins by briefly reconsidering a previous analysis of medieval Galician-Portuguese poetry, in order to clarify the relation there is between deconstruction and a certain kind of literary production. The relation is transhistorical. The paper focuses on literary works that generate defamiliarization, troubling notions of identity in the very contexts these notions emerge. General criteria governing those literary works are then proposed with the help of theoretical ideas advanced by the Brazilian concrete poets. Finally Sousa Andrade and José de Alencar (Iracema) are presented as critical examples of the kind of literary production we are here interested in.
Mediations of Disruption in Post-Conflict Cinema - Mónica Dias, Alexandra Lopes, Adriana Martins (Orgs.) (London: Palgrave-Macmillan), 2016
[*****ERRATA list for “Narrative Outbreak in Contemporary Conflict Cinema: A Case Study of Steve ... more [*****ERRATA list for “Narrative Outbreak in Contemporary Conflict Cinema: A Case Study of Steve McQueen’s Hunger”, Mediations of Disruption in Post-Conflict Cinema (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2016), 145-56. This essay was published with several minor/lethal changes in the text done without the author’s consent or acknowledgement. The original version of the essay follows the errata list.]
The actual trust of a conflict movie such as Steve McQueen’s Hunger (IE, GB, 2008) is not a political narrative or counter-narrative, but the structural tension in a series of intense, harsh and aggressive sounds followed by silence. In Hunger we see a process of emancipation of indicial (visual and audio) elements in relation to their narrative function. The process is a deconstruction—an outbreak against the conceptual unity of the movie, which enables the emergence of fragmentary, non-subjective ontological issues that are fundamental to aesthetic experience beyond its merely psychological and social dimensions. The paper starts with a theoretical discussion relying in authors such as Gilles Deleuze, André Bazin and Michel Chion, and shows the relevance of this deconstructive ontological perspective in cinema studies.
Boitatá, 2015
This essay considers some gender issues that emerge in the context of medieval poetry, more speci... more This essay considers some gender issues that emerge in the context of medieval poetry, more specifically in the context of the Galego-Portuguese cantigas de amigo. By discussing different theoretical perspectives and analyzing concrete passages of three cantigas, the essay points out to the deconstructive potential of this poetry, no matter its undeniable traditional features. This is not a philological neither a comparative work. Poetry has something which is irreducible to the context of its production. This is our focus.
Acta Scientiarum: Language and Culture, 2015
The significance of negativity as a way for conceptual determination in Hegelian dialectics is we... more The significance of negativity as a way for conceptual determination in Hegelian dialectics is well known. Authors such as Gilles Deleuze have underlined, on the other hand, how this notion of (dialectical) negativity is incompatible with a Nietzschean perspective of interplay of forces and affirmation of difference. There is here a real distension (rather than a distinction)—a fissure enabling one to think what connects and inevitably dissociates rationalistic and deconstructive philosophical perspectives on language. In this fissure, it is constituted, for instance, the space of dispersion of the so-called Foucauldian statements (énoncés), the focus of his archeology. This essay addresses the context in which the Foucauldian notion of énoncé emerges. It does so by criticizing first the dialectical notion of negativity. It then considers some semiological notions used by post-structuralist authors, such as plethora of signs and floating signifier. In a third moment, examples are taken from a literary work, Vitor Ramil's Pequod, in order to illustrate more concretely our discussion.
Acta Scientiarum, 2015
The significance of negativity as a way for conceptual determination in Hegelian dialectics is we... more The significance of negativity as a way for conceptual determination in Hegelian dialectics is well-known. Authors such as Gilles Deleuze have underlined, on the other hand, how this notion of (dialectical) negativity is incompatible with a Nietzschean perspective of interplay of forces and affirmation of difference. There is here a real distension (rather than a distinction) — a fissure enabling one to think what connects and inevitably dissociates rationalistic and deconstructive philosophical perspectives on language. In this fissure it is constituted, for instance, the space of dispersion of the so-called Foucaultian statements (énoncés), the focus of his archeology. This essay addresses the context in which the Foucaultian notion of énoncé emerges. It does so by criticizing first the dialectical notion of negativity. It then considers some semiological notions used by post-structuralist authors, such as plethora of signs and floating signifier. In a third moment, examples are taken from a literary work, Vitor Ramil’s Pequod, in order to illustrate more concretely our discussion.
Joint Annual Conference of the Society for European Philosophy and the Forum for European Philosophy Annual Conference ("Philosophy After Nature", Utrecht University), 2014
Given the fact that humans, microorganisms and inanimate beings are all in the end governed by si... more Given the fact that humans, microorganisms and inanimate beings are all in the end governed by similar kinds of merely stochastic laws, what does make up for consciousness, if not the insidious space that articulate them? Ideas such as this are discussed here through the notion of a continuum between human and natural phenomena, inserted in a panorama consisting of a bricolage of literary and cinematographic images typical of the turn of the century (1900). By doing so, this paper furthers some implications of the concept of “interactive kinds,” coined by the Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking. The argumentation relies on approaches coming from post-structuralist thinking (such as Deleuze's understanding of differentiation), Modern mathematics and literary theory (Maurice Blanchot's reading of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw in particular, and Jakobson's concept of shifter).
PANOPTIKUM, 2013
This essay brings forward and analyzes some constitutive elements of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist ... more This essay brings forward and analyzes some constitutive elements of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist that enable an understanding of its alleged morbidity and misogyny in terms of the sovereignty of aesthetic experience and its relation to the problem of cultural nihilism. These elements are the followings: the juxtaposition of horror and lyricism, and a corresponding archaic understanding of nature; the disengagement of visual and audio elements from their narrative function, and a corresponding deconstruction of the representational character of the movie itself.
Revista Universitária do Audiovisual, 2012
, cotejado com o livro que lhe teria servido de inspiração. Parte-se da ideia do sexo como simula... more , cotejado com o livro que lhe teria servido de inspiração. Parte-se da ideia do sexo como simulacro sedutor a serviço de um programa ascético de escrita. Tal programa dá origem ao fenômeno Bruna Surfistinha, como duplo subjetivo, efetivado no livro e até certo ponto desmascarado no filme. Conclui-se com um desvelamento da escrita pela imagem, suja, opaca, que não se mostra (nem no filme) -fundo irredutível, negativo, de onde a história se projeta. Palavras-chave: escrita, tecnologia, imagem, simulacro, duplo
Revista de Estudos Feministas, 2012
Loki é um documentário produzido pelo Canal Brasil sobre o músico e compositor Arnaldo Dias Bapti... more Loki é um documentário produzido pelo Canal Brasil sobre o músico e compositor Arnaldo Dias Baptista, nascido em São Paulo, e que junto com o seu irmão Sérgio e Rita Lee criaram o conjunto brasileiro de rock Os Mutantes na década de 1960. O filme resgata a carreira de Arnaldo desde esse período inicial até o momento recente, em que, depois de cair no esquecimento, e ser de certa forma marginalizado, seu trabalho vem sendo reconhecido principalmente no exterior como um dos mais originais e inovadores no cenário do rock mundial. O documentário de Fontenelle vale não apenas pelo resgate em âmbito nacional desse reconhecimento mais amplo, mas sobretudo pelo arranjo inteligente e sensível de depoimentos do próprio Arnaldo, de colegas de trabalho, amigos e críticos, dos quais se vale esse ensaio.
artciencia-com, 2012
A discussão proposta resgata elementos que permitiriam uma abordagem da obra de Francisco Candido... more A discussão proposta resgata elementos que permitiriam uma abordagem da obra de Francisco Candido Xavier enquanto fenômeno de escrita, e até mesmo de escrita literária. Tal resgate é feito a partir de uma análise crítica da cinebiografia do psicógrafo mineiro, realizada por Daniel Filho. Busca-se apontar para elementos substanciais, de uma ordem ficcional, que seriam constitutivos tanto do filme quanto do trabalho do "escritor" cuja vida o filme retrata. A fim de alcançar tal resultado, confronta-se a cinebiografia com a biografia em que supostamente é baseada, e com uma das obras chaves de Xavier. No caminho, retomam-se noções desenvolvidas por Maurice Blanchot a respeito do processo de criação literária.
There has been substantial work done interpreting the descriptive texts from the early-modern enc... more There has been substantial work done interpreting the descriptive texts from the early-modern encounters of Portuguese colonizers in Brazil. The interpretations have had major difficulty with significant elements of the texts, which the interpreters found strange from the perspective of their particular contexts. For the most part, they dismiss these elements. It is suggested here that these elements are evidence of a specific style of thinking for coming to terms with nature in the New World. The point is not that the corpus in question can be reduced to this style of thinking. There might be other styles to be identified in the corpus. But this style of thinking gives shape to the corpus to a considerable measure. Moreover, it enables one to make sense of the most strange and puzzling passages of the corpus, such as the following one, describing a " water tree " supposedly found at the time in Bahia: " in its branches it has holes of the length of an arm, which are full of water… the origin of which is unknown… and it happens that 100 souls come to it, and they are all protected, [being able to] drink and wash everything they want, and there is never water shortage " (Cardim, 1925: 67)...
Scienciae Studia, 2013
How do we face those narratives about fantastic beings and deeds without reducing them to the ana... more How do we face those narratives about fantastic beings and deeds without reducing them to the anachronistic naturalistic view of modern official science?. . . .Zir comes up to the challenge, whose outcome, shared with the reader, culminates in a more realistic (if not neorealist) understanding of the fantastic.
Confluência
In his book, Alessandro Zir attempts to interpret significant elements present in early-modern te... more In his book, Alessandro Zir attempts to interpret significant elements present in early-modern texts that are usually dismissed by critics. By analyzing these documents with the styles-of-thinking approach in mind, the author brings a new light to colonial (and post-colonial) Luso-Brazilian Studies. Zir combines the ontological concern of the sixteenth century Portuguese colonizers in Brazil, which is the understanding of visible and invisible (or supernatural) beings, with their method of aesthetically describing them. The author begins by focusing on the Christian Neo-platonic method of analogy adopted by writers, in which words and objects of nature, visible and invisible, are rendered undistinguishable.
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2011
As it happens with other early-Modern corpora, the descriptive texts from sixteenth-century encou... more As it happens with other early-Modern corpora, the descriptive texts from sixteenth-century encounters of the Portuguese colonizers in Brazil are well-known for their strangeness. In them we find references to entities like monsters and demons, bizarre descriptions, and odd classification systems of plants and animals. Modern scholars usually dismiss these elements as mere eccentricities. Instead, this book takes these elements seriously. They are focused on and tackled with a theoretical tool—styles of thinking— developed in the fields of philosophy and history of science. By doing so the book aims to unveil epistemological and ontological issues in which colonial and post-colonial studies are entangled, and which have a relevance that goes beyond debates concerning, for instance, the formation of Brazil’s cultural identity.
This book contributes to Luso-Brazilian studies, science studies, and the history of the early-modern period. The notion of “styles of thinking” as presented and used in it benefitted from the many discussions about philosophy and history of science that emerged since the 1980s, with authors such as Ian Hacking, Lorraine Daston, and Peter Galison, who have already done much reassessing critically what is best in the work of previous authors such as Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, and Michel Foucault.
This book considers that the well-known puzzling passages of the corpus of the Portuguese have a fictional and figurative character that acquires full intelligibility in view of literary and mystical traditions typical of the late Renaissance, and influential over the Portuguese. Nature is understood as emerging from an excessive source which permanently overflows it and which is impossible to refer to and depict literally. The book points to the fact that such an idea would connect the Portuguese with other peculiar pre-Modern and post-Modern authors with similar ontological insights: from the neo-Platonists to Boccaccio, Nietzsche, and more recently, Derrida.
Percepção e Análise Musical: Seminário de Discussão Padrões musicais, que vão do pequeno motivo a... more Percepção e Análise Musical: Seminário de Discussão Padrões musicais, que vão do pequeno motivo a formas mais complexas, como a canção e a sonata, constituem-se e se transformam através de diferentes contextos históricos. Vêm a fazer parte de configurações culturais em regiões específicas, em diferentes estratos sociais, eruditos, populares, que eles atravessam e põem em contato. Ao longo dessa trajetória, os padrões musicais mantêm algum tipo de identidade, também se hibridizam, muitas vezes se alteram até a descaracterização. Este seminário se foca na escuta imersiva, na percepção de alguns desses padrões, às vezes emblemáticos, outras vezes estranhos, com apoio em exemplos concretos de um repertório que vai do clássico ao contemporâneo. Reflete-se sobre o universo sonoro a partir de suas múltiplas dimensões, timbre, ritmo, altura. Propõe-se relações. Discute-se criticamente abordagens contemporâneas como a chamada "teoria dos tópicos" e a "teoria neo-riemanniana". O seminário está aberto a um público que já possui algum tipo de iniciação musical, a que se convida para participar das discussões compartilhando vivências e diferentes instrumentais de análise.