A reescrita da infância: memória, ficção e sublimação em Graciliano Ramos

Abstract

By privileging the ficcional status of Graciliano Ramos memoir book Infância (1945), in this doctoral thesis I identify the relationship stablished between memory, fiction and sublimation at the moment that the narrator proposes to write about the past. For that purpose , I start from Lejeune's autobiography studies, as well as the concept of memory as developed by Halbwachs, Bergson, Candau, Sarlo and Freud. I maintain that, by combining memory and fiction, fact and creation, history and imagination, the Gracilian narrator points to the strength that the word possesses and to the possibility of constructing a narrative out of anguish and suffering. I further add that this is a mark of Gracilian writing and this is present not only in Infância, but also in other texts by the writer. Focusing on psychoanalysis as theoretical perspective, I show that the narrative of childhood leads the subject to bear the great losses and difficulties of existence, reworking them as a sublimatory alternative that offers life and libidinal pleasure, instead of death and annihilation of the subject.