If Narcissus were a river: the subject in Água Viva

• Grant number: 24/10394-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2024
• End date: October 31, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Cristina Henrique da Costa
• Grantee: Gustavo Marçon Puppim
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The critical review of Clarice Lispector's work takes different paths, sometimes through the lens of language, sometimes through the history of literary forms, sometimes through subjectivity, whether through psychoanalysis or existentialist philosophy. Following the thread that Clarice's reception weaves, this project develops a reading of Clarice Lispector's Água Viva, whose plot progresses as if it were a continuous act of subjective experience, without, however, tending towards an intimate narrative. The project seeks to elaborate the hypothesis that the narrative allows us to glimpse a non-Cartesian subject, incapable of "self-foundation", which can nevertheless be understood as an event of action and through action in a dynamic of intersubjectivity, based on the author's critical repertoire, to which Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics, Meschonnic's critical poetics and Bachelard's philosophy of the imagination will be added. A productive circularity is recognised in this reading of Agua Viva: it is necessary to rely on innovative theories in terms of defining subjectivity in order to read the narrative, at the same time as it is necessary to read the narrative as a renewal of the question of subjectivity. Based on a theoretically grounded reading attitude, starting from the literary text as an action, the project seeks to think about the theme of intersubjectivity through language within the field of literary studies. By exploring the aforementioned fields, starting from a vision of the subject that is not rooted in the individual, and like any reflection on a subject that acts in the world, the aim is to evaluate the ethical ramifications of literature and its contribution to shaping contemporary culture.