Representações de gênero e poder em São Bernardo, de Graciliano Ramos

Abstract

The aim of this work is to analyse genre and power in São Bernardo novel, written by Graciliano Ramos. To build the theoretical reference and the methodological guidance of the research are used the principles of the Critical Discourse Analysis, from Faircough (2001) and Meurer (2002). It was taken 91 (ninety-one) fragments from the novel to constitute the corpus, selected by criterion of representative positions of the social characters in conflict in the novel. The analysis consider the effective use of language within the context in which the representations of the human experiences are constructed and, so, focus lexical-grammar and enunciative choices, as the verbal forms, transitivities and the representation ways of the characters´ discourses, as well as others derivative categories.The work is settled in two chapters. In the first chapter we can find a brief historical-theoretical reference, which gather Critical Discourse Analysis principles, procedures and issues related to genre concepts and also the relations among men and women. In the second one, discuss the invention of the space (São Bernardo, farm and literary work), the perspective of the images constructions, and analyse the images and representation of genre and power which cross the discourses and the invention of the characters that pass through this space. The analyses highlights a discourse of alterity as a narrative strategy of a male narrator who doesn´t want to give way to the women his central position of enunciation and brings to the scene, dialectically, a detachment and a constant dialogue between the different position of the subject: man/woman; capitalist/socialist, narrator/speaker, power/no-power, one moment stressed, the next hiding the differences. It is also identified conflicts generated by the impossibility of the subjects’ fulfilment and their personal goals, bringing to the scene a feminine subject who confronts itself with the masculine, in a struggle between political positions which goes beyond the place of the relations of genre. These actors, when taking their turns in the discursive practice, they build, as social subjects, images of themselves, the others and the reality, forming nets of meanings and, so, taking part of an active social practice, materialized in the discourse in communicative contexts of confront (as opponent) and of cooperation (as regulators and even mediators).Although prevail the confront situations (visible, apparent), in the discourse of the novel predominates the naturalization: the social and cultural facts are seen as inevitable or unquestionable, as it is the long last case of the superiority of the male, the female resignation, the death, the marriage, the employee/employer relations from the semi-feudal society of São Bernardo farm and in the world capitalism. Through the analyses, we were able to identify many interdiscursive relations in the conversion/diversion of the capitalism/ant capitalism representations, patriarchal/feminism; semi-feudalism/ bourgeoisie, local/universal, materialized in Paulo Honório e Madalena´s polemical voices. Through the analyses we can notice that the genre relations are produced in a universe of cultural values until then constituted, however the woman continues to be subjugated to the man, the same way the man is subjugated to the capital.