Oficina das máscaras: o personagem produtor de sujeitos na obra de Autran Dourado

Abstract

In its modern conception, observable since romanticism, the discussions about subject and about literature were closely related, so that any changes involving one of these fields leads to sensitive changes in the other. In the 20th century, mainly in the French post-structuralist context, we observe a systematic attack to the so-called subject of metaphysics, which led, among other factors, to the author‘s death and to the devaluation of the character in theory of literature. These attacks against the subject soon prompted reactions, being that, already in the 1980‘s Philosophy and Literary Studies begin to rethink these questions. This occurs, for example, in Cultural Studies, which again considers the subject an important element to think about literature, focusing on its relationship with identity politics, which boosted the revaluation of categories such as the author and the narrator. Nonetheless, there is still a theoretical deficit in character studies. After the subject‘s criticism, the conceptions defended by narratology approaches regarding the character can no longer sustain themselves. However, at least on Brazilian academy, there are almost no new proposals for theoretical approaches to the concept. This points to the need for a new theoretical approach to the character that takes into account his relationships with the subject, which implies new conceptual approaches of one and the other. In Brazilian literary scene, Autran Dourado is one of the authors for whom the character and, simultaneously, the subject constitution process are revealed as fundamental elements in his multifaceted production, which encompasses fictional texts, critical essays, letters, among others. Through an intense transdisciplinary dialog, the present research proposes an analysis of Autran Dourado‘s work that allows a theoretical reformulation of the character category, understanding it as an essential concept to think about the relationship between subject and literature. We propose, in this perspective, the conception of character as a constant process of mask production. This proposal seeks to think the concept beyond the conceptualization that analyzes it only as an element of the narrative. Thus, we can visualize the production of character masks also in relation to the narrator, to the author and to the theorist/critic, understanding, in relation to the latter categories, that the production of masks by historical subjects is also carried out through fictional mechanisms present in literature. Therefore, in the same way that literature is always closely linked to variations concerning the concept of subject, we advocate that the literary institution itself is linked to the production of character masks.