A real is confessed: Graciliano Ramos and the alienation paradox

Abstract

This study aims to examine the work of Graciliano Ramos, more specifically São Bernardo (1934) and Vidas secas (1938). I will start from Antonio Candido's insight regarding the author's work: it oscillates between two poles, fiction and confession. Instead of considering them as mutually exclusive, the hypothesis is that the oscillation concerns a paradoxical reading of modernization, in which it is seen as necessary but impossible. The traits of this impossibility, in turn, concern a particular understanding of the idea of alienation: namely, how to manage a lack that, in itself, forms the object Ramos is interested in: the sertão as the locus of exploitation. The specific context of the 1930s romance in Brazil will be taken into account, as well as its relationship with the political events of the period and the particular place that the country occupied in Western capitalism. Finally, a hypothesis will be put forth regarding Ramos' formal arrangement. I argue that its realism depends on the confession of this impossibility, in which alienation is exposed, and through which it would be possible to glimpse the utopian trait beyond the limits of the modern.