Literature of minorities under the pen of a sad visionary

Abstract

This article aims to study the work of Lima Barreto (1881-1922), whose production is associated with the Pre-Modernist period of Brazilian literature, but his works are considered fundamental for the study of modern narrative, as he markedly addressed the political, social reality and culture of a time. From this perspective, we investigated the literary factors that combined with factors of national historical reality made his production reach us so up to date. Barreto wrote about the problems of men and women in a country, whose rulers were increasingly focused on the interests of those who dominated by force and less and less on the interests of the people – the minorities: blacks, indians, women and all those who they found themselves on the margins of a capitalist and exclusionary society. We prioritized reading Barreto's Brazil, taking as a theoretical basis the Lacanian Materialism proposed by Slavoj Žižek (2010, 2014), whose purpose is to establish the points at which the narrated facts come together and distance themselves historically and socially. This is a bibliographical and qualitative research analyzing the structure of the novel, which is why it sought to study the forms of systemic violence that mark/marked these minorities and discuss literature as a representation of people in a given society and time. One of the most significant aspects of Lima Barreto's work is its continued relevance. The issues he addressed, such as racism, social inequality and exclusion, remain current and resonate in contemporary Brazil.