As gavetas nunca estiveram vazias: ditadura militar, escrita e resistência na obra de Antônio Torres

Abstract

In late March or early April 1964, the Brazilian military staged a coup d'état and deposed President João Goulart, democratically elected three years earlier. With laws and decrees designed exclusively to annihilate movements contrary to the anti-democratic regime, the coup generals remained in power for more than two decades and, during this period, institutionalized violence. To repress the artistic milieu, almost always staunch opponents of the autocratic government, Decree 1077/70 was published, specifically designed to repress the cultural sector, as the law affected freedom of expression by explicitly determining prior censorship of cultural publications. In this context of repression of books and the upsurge of State violence, this work analyzes the novels Um cão uivando para lua (1972), Os homens dos pés redondos (1973) and Essa terra (1976), works by the writer Antônio Torres. Despite different themes, the three books have in common plots with critical passages alluding to the country's political situation and the crimes committed by the repressive system, which would characterize these novels as archive literature of the dictatorship. Therefore, this thesis analyzes the three narratives, pointing out the marks of repression in the daily life of the character identified as the common citizen and demonstrating the configurations carried out by the writer to register, through literature, the artistic confrontation, through literary writing, to the regime of exception. We present and discuss the scenario of book censorship; we situate the novelist's production in the political-social context; we analyzed the fragments alluding to the violence practiced by the military dictatorship. Academic studies based on the 1964 regime (CARNEIRO, 2002; FICO, 2002; GASPARI, 2014; JOFFILY, 2014; PELLEGRINO, 1992; REIS, RIDENTE & MOTTA, 2014; SELIGMANN-SILVA, 2003; SILVA, 1989); concepts of resistance in writing, authoritarianism and censorship (BOSI, 1996,2002; DALCASTAGNÈ, 1996; FIGUEIREDO, 2017; PELLEGRINI, 1990; REIMÃO, 2012,2016; VENTURA, 1988); official documents (Brazilian government websites and data about the dictatorship in Brazil); periodicals of the time; critical fortune of the books analyzed here (BARBOSA, 1973; CHAVES, 2018; COUTINHO, 1973; RIBEIRO 1973,1976; VIERA, 1974). In the end, it seems clear to us that the studied novels propose reflections, prove possibilities of representing history through the literary and illuminate the importance of literature as an instrument of symbolic resistance against anti-democratic regimes and their various forms of oppression.