O animal biopolítico em Clarice Lispector e em Heliônia Ceres

Abstract

The discussion about the limits between the animal and the human has been the subject of several reflections among the Western thought, stepping, consequently, into the literary field. From the 1960 onwards, however, the animal begins to emerge more and more as a political sign in literary works, making room for interpretations concerning what it means to be legitimate as human and have the right to live, approaching the field of biopolitics. Having in mind this presence of the animality in literary works and its biopolitical repercussions, this work proposes a comparative study on the effects of the animal in short stories present in the books Laços de família (1960) and Olho de besouro (1998), by Clarice Lispector and by Heliônia Ceres, respectively, considering the special position the animal occupies in their texts. Other works by them and by different authors who also wrote (about) the animal are going to be used in order to enrich the proposed study. The texts are going to be analyzed, discussed and compared based on critics who write about Clarice Lispector and Heliônia Ceres and focusing on the mentioned discussions concerning the animality and the biopolitics. By means of this comparative study, it is possible to identify how the animal emerges, in both authors, as a destablishing element of the antropocentric reason and as a representative of the conflict between nature and culture, even when it is approached in different ways by the authors.