Desfavelamento [favela extinction] as trauma

the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship in the testimonial literature of Conceição Evaristo

Abstract

Based on studies of testimony and trauma, as well as the understanding that the escrevivência [writing-living] involves a diasporic phenomenon that – grounded in the imbrication between writing and lived experience – connects the victims of coloniality in a critique of an image of the past that re-enacts the pains of catastrophe, this article analyzes the book Becos da memória, by the Brazilian author Conceição Evaristo. Therefore, the argument presented is that this work constitutes, through language, a denunciation of the violence linked to the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship and, furthermore, encompasses an exercise in the public elaboration of the trauma of a broader and more persistent colonial past.