The memorialistic path of Conceição Lima in O Útero da Casa

• Grant number: 14/07092-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: June 01, 2014
• End date: March 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Other Vernacular Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Marcio Roberto Pereira
• Grantee: Michael Douglas Alves Pantaleão
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This paper seeks to analyze the presence and characterization of memory in the discourse of Conceição Lima (1961-), using as corpus her first published book, O Útero da Casa (2004). Based on a reading of the poems in this volume I will explore the ways in which these relate to existing theories of memory, principally those proposed by Michael Pollak and Paul Ricoeur, as I attempt to bridge theory and text. Possessing a poetic voice that reflects on the past while reinscribing this past into the present to better understand it, Conceição Lima invokes happenings, places, and people as formative of herself, in a process that remembers just as much as it critiques. Going against the dominant narratives of the past, her poems seek to affirm her culture as they restore her country's history, unsettling the universal historiography. I intend to expose the relations between processes of memory and poetic language discursive processes. (AU)