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8/3/2019 Moriconi & Streeter, Does Literature Still Matter?
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Does Literature Still Matter? (Working Notes on the States of the Art of Brazilian Literature)Author(s): Ítalo Moriconi and Mark StreeterSource: Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 40, No. 2, Special Issue: Luso-Brazilian Studies in the NewMillennium (Winter, 2003), pp. 83-88Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3514078 .
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Does Literature Still Matter? (Working Notes on theStates of the Art of Brazilian Literature)
Italo Moriconi
The final ten to at the most fifteen years of the 20th centuryhave frequentlybeencharacterized as a period of profound crisis in Brazilian literature.Along with this
diagnosis-which is not, it maybe saidin passing, uniquein any way eitherto ourcountryor to its ideologues-one hearsof a crisis in literary ulture,of a crisisin literary ducation
[formacao].' Inthe following pagesI will presupposearelationofnecessitybetweenvarious
diverse terms: literature, iterarylife, literaryculture, literaryeducation, literarydesire[vontade], literary etishization.Literature xists only if thereexists a literary ife; literarylife exists only if there exists a literaryculture,that is, a more or less codified systemofcollective reference to a determined,yet flexible, canonicalrepertoireof texts, at bottomfictionalandpoetical,withina secularcivilization thathasrelegatedoa secondplanesacredtexts of monologicalreferencesuch as the Bible, the Torah,or the Koran.
The historyof literaryculture, n the translinguistic,occidental and now even almost
global sense of the expression,and of literarycultures, n the particularized, egionalandnationalsense, is theagonistichistoryof thedialectic betweenthetrajectory f belles lettresand instances of canonical legitimation.The lively andrapidmovementof belles lettres,
whichderivesfrom themarketplace ndthepublicsphere, s alwaysproducinganti-canons.In turn, iteraryculturecansurviveonly if thereexists literary ducationas a centralaspectof "education" n the largersense (in the sense ofpaideia). Thehistoryof education s the
subjective and objective history of educational institutions in which are produced,reproduced,and circulatedshared ntellectualvalues, ethics, andattitudes,hermeneutical
traditions,as well as the codes andritualsof scholarlypracticeandthought.In Braziltoday,such educational nstitutionsare,solely andexclusively, the universities.2
From a socio-structuralpoint of view, literaryculture is a result of literarydesire,organizedin discoursesandpracticeswhose thematicobsessions,as well as whose formallimitsandpossibilities,borderon a largerpolitical-pedagogical space n whichconflictsaredecidedin relation o the
foundationalprinciplesandgreater ndsof thesociety,understoodas whatever social group (national, regional, local, transversal,virtual) in which theexistence of such a desireis registeredandverified.Literarydesire is what defines literaryfetishization,without whichno texthaseithersense or value.3From heinstitutional ointof
view, literarydesirenurtures heformationof theformative radition,definingahorizonfor
writing's social responsibility.Inthe case of Brazil,writing'sresponsibilityhasbeen linkedtraditionallyo its role in
the constructionof anefficientstate.Oneshould rememberhereAntonioCandido'sclassicthesis abouttheperiodthathe calledthe "formation f Brazilian iterature"the 18thand19th
centuries),duringwhich the pattern or intellectualand literary ife was instituted n our
country, a patternmarkedby a certainduality
in social roles in which the writer is also
frequentlya professionalpolitician,and,moreoftenthannot, the professionalpoliticiana
Luso-BrazilianReview,XL 0024-7413/02/083? 2003 by theBoardof Regentsof the
Universityof WisconsinSystem
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practitionerof fiction andpoetry.In the semanticsof Candido,"formation"s a collective
termreferring o the historicalconstructionof a"we"-a community f writersandreaders,which he calls "the literary system." Such a system is defined by the desire to have a
literature,whichechoes thedesire to have anation, tself"in formation" nder heaegisof a
never-endingeffort atpoliticalandculturalunificationpromulgatedby the state,for whichwritersare, literally,functionaries.
Despite the ideological rupturesthat have divided-for the most part in a rather
superficialway-the protagonistsof ourliteraryandintellectual ife in thepost-1930 epoch,the responsibility for supplying the nation with a literature-a literatureacceptablefor
adoptionas acanonby state-supported edagogical nstitutionsandcapableofenteringnto
internationalcirculation as works of quality-has been thrownuponthe shouldersof all.
There is a correlation between an individual's educationalformationin literature, he
formation of an autonomousliterarysystem,and the formationof the nationas an entityendowed with its own eruditecultural dentity.The exportabilityof eruditeor learned(in
sum, literary)culture has always been put forwardas the exportationof that potentialnational identity. Oswald de Andrade believed that such exportationwould come to be
accomplishedby diplomat-intellectuals.Antonio Candidofor his parttrustedsolely and
exclusively in thenationalizeduniversitysystem,of whichhe wastheprimary roductof the
firstgeneration.No matterhow dominant he constructiveandpedagogicalresponsibility o the state
mayhave been for literarymodernism, t failed to controlthescene in itsentirety; herewas
analternative urrent hatsubsequentlyachieveddominance,onerecycledandre-clothedbythe work of ClariceLispectorout of a vanguardist-kitsch ardrobe.This currentpertains o
the movementrepresentedby prosewritersof a tragicbent,suchas Licio Cardoso,Corelio
Pena,Octavio de Fariaandothers,andby poets such as theearlyViniciusde Moraesor the
Jorgede Lima from Tempoe eternidadeto Invencaode Orfeu.It is a currentdirectedmore
towards the existential and subjective dimension of literarycreation than towards its
pedagogicalinsertion ntoa comprehensiveproject nspiredbythe nationorstate.If there s
a pedagogy here, it is one of intimacy,of affects,of passions.When we examine the directions that Brazilian fiction took in the 1960s in the
emblematic works of Clarice Lispectorand Rubem Fonseca we can see that this new
dominantis already n play. LispectorandFonsecaopeneda creative vein quite different
fromthatgiven by themodelthatobliged responsibility o thestate(theintellectualpatternof which is impiouslycaricaturednAHoradaEstrela).InLispector'swork-on everypageof every text-one finds reaffirmedthe fact that the responsibilityof artistic creation
concerns only the idiosyncraticandtransgressive ndividualityof the artistherself, in her
intenseandpermanentdialoguewith a readingpublicthat nitiallywas barelysoughtafter,butwhich she projectedwithanobsessive, yetpolymorphic,coherence ntovirtuallyeverybook thatshe publishedin her career.
Inthe characters ndsituationsof thegreaterpartof RubemFonseca'sworkonedetects
the micrological horizon of a "life-world"foreign to the totalizing referentialityof the
nationalpolitics of unification,a life-world thatfunctionsonly in accordancewith its own
perversedynamics. (Oneexceptionwould beAgosto, in whichFonseca,in aninvestigationof the Brazilian national character via the dynamics of state politics, approachesthe
historicalnovel.)
The withdrawalof literature rom its relationto any articulatedsocial or politicalexigency continues to be accentuated n the course of the 1980s.Givingvoice to theperiod'slack, the rockmusicianCazuzautters he somewhatbelatedcry:"Ideologia eu querouma
pra viver" ("Ideology / I need one so that I can live"). A crucial aspect of the allegedmillennial crisis is the fact thatemergingwriters,not knowing in which values to anchor
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their works, see themselves as adriftand lost. Each writer finds himself faced with the
circumstanceof havingto createhis own individualproject, nwhich he mustincludein an
at least implicitmannera definition of its addressee,of its desiredreader'snature,because
the category of the readertoo has lost its clarityand homogeneity. If in the modernist
paradigmone wrote in order o constructa Brazilian iterature, tcentury'sendthis ethicaljustificationfor literatures no longersufficient;for the timebeing at least, thereis simplyno will sufficiently grandioseto be able to occupythe spacevacatedby the flightof form-
giving meta-narrative.
I do not believe that this situationnecessarilypertainsto any crisis in the national
project-despite the fact that one may detect something like this in the process of the
dramatic reorientation that occurred in the 1990s with its emphasis on supra-nationalarticulations mostnotably Mercosul),something hatbrings,will bringorthatcontinues o
bringimportant onsequencesforthedisciplinaryknowledgeof literaturenoureducational
institutions.Whatone mustpointoutinstead s precisely hedisjunction etween,on the one
hand, the level of the nationalprojectthatis undergoing ransformation nd,on the otherhand,the level of political-pedagogicalprojects hatwould offerwritersandreaders reason
to continuewritingandreading.
* * *
A standard eadingof themillennialcrisislinksit to the transformationsssociatedwith
postmodemityas a global phenomenon.In orderto develop suggestionsalreadymadebyother critics and culturalcommentators, ne canadmitas a workinghypothesisthat Brazil
passed directly to postmoderity without ever having had implantedin its territoryacanonical moder culture.4Brazil entered into the era of televisual hegemony and,
immediatelythereafter, hat of digital literacybefore it could be said to have gotten even
close to winning the war for phoneticliteracyand for primaryandhigh school education.
One mustnote, however,thatthis is a problemonly insofaras one believes in a necessarycorrelationbetween the qualityof literaryart and the achievementof the Enlightenmentdreamof the criticalenlightenmentof the masses.
In the final two decades of the past centuryone witnessed the abrupt, houghlargelyuntraumatic, establishment of the hegemony of the multi-medial, multi-sensorial,communicationalparadigm,whichreachescapillary-likentoeverycorer of our ndividual
and collective bodies. One leaves the order of Literature n order to enter into that of
Communication.From iterary ormationasacumulative, elf-referentialntellectual rocess(to an "I"and to a "we")one passes to a libidinal immersion n the constantly changinguniverse of the proliferating ystemof audiovisualsigns. Fromthe horizon of constructive
responsibilityone passes to a horizondominatedby the culturalpracticesof diversionand
entertainment.
In Brazil, the primaryand high school educational system alreadyhas opted for
Communication n place of Literature, erhapson a scale unimagined n otherpartsof the
world.Theteachingof the"readingof signs"predominates verthe"alphabetic"eadingof
adiscursivetext, this understoodas a specifictypeof reading,of readingas anactivity, tself
discursive,involvingparaphrase ndtextualanalysisaccompanied y trainingn rhetoric nd
hermeneutics,anddesignedto equipindividualsandgroupswith the tools for nterventionnthe public sphereor, as one says in contemporaryargon,for the exerciseof theirrightsas
citizens.
Againstsuchtraditionaliterarypedagogy,we see todaythatsong lyrics,comicbooks,andfacile newspapercr6nicasconstitute heprivilegedmaterialsnthe"language"lasses of
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ourchildrenandadolescents. Thatwhich in other countriesmay yet be seenperhapsas the
daringof revolutionary ducatorsoras acomplemento othermoremainstreamctivitieshas
become banal in the day-to-day reality of Brazilian schools. On the other hand,
paradoxically,because of the lack of adequate quipment nd heunpreparednessf teachers
in termsof didacticmethodology, hepedagogicalpossibilitiesof television itself,of video,andof personalcomputersremainunrealized.
If one looks attheschedules forthe finalyearsof highschool, one sees that"literature"
class, when it exists autonomously romclasses in grammar, ccupiestwo periods(or even
only one period)eachweek and that t is limited, n theabsolutemajority f cases,to leadingstudents in mechanically dentifyingthe characteristics f the baroque,of romanticism,of
pamassianism,and of modernism ntextualfragments.Thereadingof entire iteraryworks s
practicallybanishedfromthe lives of adolescents n themajorityof Brazilian chools.When
it is necessaryto readentirebooks, works of juvenile literature reusuallyassigned.Thereis a clear infantilizationof the readerof literaturehe or she who readsbecause
he or she likes to read) that is reflected in the publishing world and in its concept ofliterature,and which has spread to the university system itself in the context of the
disseminationand decentralizationof educationalinstitutions.The decline of the meta-
narrativeof formation n Candido's sense is indeedthe decline of the hegemonicforceof
USP [TheUniversityof Sao Paulo],orof what one can call USP-ianthought,understood s
a modelof thoughtthat endorsesa strategyof power/knowledge. ronically, heUSPprojectattained ts political apogee at the sametime as the complementary ystemformedby the
political partiesPSDB and PTcame into existence,while the humanistic houghtthathad
always sustained it lost its centralityas a resultof the growthof the universitysystem's
graduateprograms n Letters.
* * *
One victim of this new configuration s what in the 1970s we used to like to call the
opacityof the text.Themyththatprovidessustenance o the kind of literature emandedbythe marketplace s that literature s transparent nd clear,and thatthe writerof literature
should be capableof communicatingwith a wide numberof people.Maleandfemalewriters
of the 1990s andof the firstyearsof the21stcenturyhave had to be competentcompositionwritersabove all. Theyhave had to be preparedo say in anelegantor slightly provocativemannerthatwhich the
publicwantsto hear,thatwhich the
publicalreadyknows, a
publicthateachdaymoreand moreequatesto andcoincideswiththeTV-viewing public.A "one-
size-fits-all"knowledgeof life's facts andof esotericspirituality uits the writerbest. The
symbolof all of this is the namePaulo Coelho. In a recentmeetingwithwritersnSaoPaulo,MarciaDensercommentedthatthe "end"or "disappearance"f literaturen the courseof
the 1980s musthave occurredon the daywhenPaulo Coelho firstoccupiedthetop spot in
the bestsellerlists.
Indeed,threeyears ago, my graduate tudentsandImadeaquickcomparisonbetween
the bestsellerlists of the mid-1970s and those of the mid-1990s; it was possible to confirm
whateditors have been sayingfor years:thereis increasingly ess and less room for "real"
literature n the general accountingof book sales. It is of course true that the Brazilian
publishing market has not stoppedgrowing and that, in absolutenumbers,the sales forfiction and for the most renownedpoets have increased as well (including contemporary
poets, as in the cases of AdeliaPrado,Manoel de Barros,FerreiraGullarand,morerecently,Hilda Hilst). Nevertheless, the percentage of quality literaturesold has diminished in
relation to the overall numbersof book production.
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The lists of thebestsellingbooks of the 1970sappear ike somethingout of adream: nthe same month one could find, simultaneously,recently publishedworksby authors ike
LygiaFagundesTelles, RubemFonseca,JoaoAntonio,OsmanLins.... Today,there is noliterature thatis, qualityfiction andpoetry)to be found,even at the bottom of such lists.
Rather,such spots aredominatedby books of little realvalue,which I proposebe deemedthe "MalbaTahaneffect."5
Still, contraryto the apocalyptic tones of some who see this crisis as absolutelyterminal,one must point out thatthereis a new generationof prose-writers hat surfaced
duringthe 1990s. AgainstwhatCazuzawas calling for at the beginningof the 1980s, this
generationhas madede-ideologizationits battlecry,while at the same time being able to
vary significantlythe ways in which such an anti-projectmightbe manifested.One of the
words or expressionsmostrepeatedby youngwritershas been levity,or lightness.Another
keyword s de-dramatization.From his basis one canidentify n prosefictiontwo principalcurrents,one that is investedin humor,another hat seeks to reinstate entimentalism.The
formerhas to do with languagehumor,with nonsense,which in the case of anauthor ikeMarcelo Mirisola achieves a total outrageousness,finding in literature he adolescentlyiconoclastic mirage of an "offensive machine,"which is nothing but the symmetricalcounterpoint o the comforting,seductivemachinethat is communicational,media-basedculture.There are othernotableauthorson the humorside, amongwhom I might highlightNelson de Oliveira andBerardo Carvalho.
The recuperationof sentimentalismhas been achievedin partby new female,thoughnot feminist, writers(I will mentionhere the name of AdrianaLisboa)as well as by gaywriters, although not exclusively, since one can also say that an author like Rubens
Figueiredo s equallyinvolved in linkingliterature nd affectiveintensity. nthe sentimental
current n contemporaryBrazilianliterature glimpse the glimmerof values: solidarity,generosity,identity-not as anessence-but as thedialogicalprocessof theconstruction f
interpersonalmemoriesandhistories.
TranslatedbyMarkStreeter
NOTES
See RobertoSchwarz n 1999:"Atpresent he literary ystemseems a repositoryof
forces in disintegration. do not saythis with any greatyearning,but in a spiritof realism.The system yet managesto function,or can function,as somethingreal andconstructiveinsofar as it is one of the spaces in which we can sense what is being decomposed.The
contemplationof the loss of acivilizatory orce does not for itspartceasebeing civilizatory.For a long time we have tended to see inorganicity,and the hypothesis of its beingovercome,as theparticulardestinyof Brazil. Now this inorganicityandtheruinationof thebelief in overcomingit appearas the destinyof the greaterpartof contemporary umanity;this is not, in this sense, a secondary experience" Seqiiuncias brasileiras 58). See alsoGalvao.
2 1have investigatedthe topic offormacao in the intellectual radition n two essays:"Conflitoe
integracao.A
pedagogiae a
pedagogiado
poemaem Antonio Candido,"and
"Umestadistasensitivo.A nogaode formacaoe o papeldo literario mMinhaformacaode
JoaquimNabuco."3 I have for some timebeen attempting o elaboratea reflectionon the categoryof the
"political-pedagogical"n essays such as those cited in the previousnote, as well as in the
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following: "Qualquercoisa fora do tempo e do espaco (Poesia, literatura,pedagogiada
barbarie)" nd"A outradimensao:desidentidades."4 Silviano Santiago,"Alfabetizacao,eiturae sociedadede massa";AntonioCandido,
"Literatura subdesenvolvimento."
5 For those unfamiliar with Malba Tahan, see the website:
http://www.ohomemquecalculava.hpg.ig.com.br/index.htm.
WORKSCITED
Candido,Antonio. "Literatura subdesenvolvimento."A educacdopela noite. Sao Paulo:
Atica, 1987. 140-163.
Galvao,WalniceNogueira."CulturaContraCultura."adernoMais.Folhade SaoPaulo 17
Mar. 2002: 5-9.
Moriconi, italo. "Conflitoe integracao.A pedagogiae a pedagogiado poemaem AntonioCandido." Antonio Candido y los estudios latinoamericanos. Ed. Rail Antelo.
Pittsburgh: nstitutoInteracional de Literaturaberoamericana,001. 249-281.
."Um estadista sensitivo. A nocao de formanaoe o papel do literarioem Minha
formacao de JoaquimNabuco." RevistaBrasileira de Ciencias Sociais 16.46 (June
2001): 161-172.
. "A outra dimensao: desidentidades." Raizes e rumos - Perspectivas
interdisciplinaresem estudos americanos. Ed. Sonia Torres.Rio de Janeiro:Sette
Letras,2001. 71-78.
."Qualquercoisa fora do tempo e do espaco (Poesia, literatura,pedagogia da
barbarie)."Leiturasdo ciclo. Ed.RauilAntelo.Florian6polis:Grifos/Abralic, 999.75-86.
Santiago, Silviano. "Alfabetiza:ao, leitura e sociedade de massa."Rede imagindria -
Televisdo e democracia. Ed. Adauto Novaes. Sao Paulo: Cia das Letras, 1991.
["Readingand discursive intensities; on the situation of postmodernreception in
Brazil."Trans.MichaelAronna.Boundary2 [Durham]20.3 (Fall 1993): 194-202.]
Schwarz,Roberto.Seqiienciasbrasileiras.Sao Paulo: Ciadas Letras,1999.
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