O exílio no testemunho da segunda geração: elementos para um paradigma narrativo

Abstract

In this research, we analyze the testimony of the children of the persecuted, disappeared and political dead of the 1964 Military Dictatorship, which refers to the childhood experience in exile and the way this experience is presented in literary and cinematographic production. For this, we selected two research corpora. The first consists of testimonial narratives published in 2014 in the book Infância Roubada, among which we selected the narratives entitled: “O exílio do meu pai foi a nossa despedida”, by Suely Coqueiro; “Por que você é tão tristinha?” by Marta Nehring; and “Adotados pela Revolução Cubana”, by Virgílio Gomes da Silva Filho. The second corpora consist of the novel entitled Meninos sem Pátria, by Luiz Puntel, published in 1988, by the Vaga-Lume series; the novel titled A Resistencia, published in 2015, by Brazilian writer Julián Fuks, son of parents exiled from the dictatorship in Argentina; and the film entitled Diário de uma Busca, released in 2010, by Flávia Castro, daughter of persecuted politicians from the Dictatorship in Brazil. The thesis dialogues with concepts from the field of migration studies (CAVALCANTI, 2017; OIM, 2009, SAYAD, 1998), among which we highlight the concept of exile (AGAMBEN, 1996; SAID, 2003; VIÑAR and VIÑAR, 1992; ROLLEMBERG, 1999, 2007). The thesis also dialogues with studies on narratives of exile (ADORNO, 1999; CORTÁZAR, 2001; VIDAL, 2004; FIGUEIREDO, 2017), state of exception (AGAMBEN, 2004); testimony (SELIGMANN-SILVA, 2003, 2005, 2013; VILELA, 2000; SALGUEIRO, 2012); literature and testimony (DE MARCO, 2004; LUQUE, 2003); memory (SARLO, 2007; BASILE, 2019; FANDIÑO, 2016); survival (PELBART, 2008, 2013) and utopia (SZACHI, 1972). The study has as its central theoretical approach the studies on exile, testimony and memory of the second generation. However, we found that the testimonial narratives are crossed, as well as the concept of utopia, as there is, in these texts, a personal desire of the children to understand their own identities, which points to the paradigm of an ad infinitum present of the traumatized experience of the event historic. Faced with this reality, an alternative emerges, namely, the desire to carry out a collective project that strives for another form of relationship between the population and the State. Is this the utopia for a way of life not marked by state violence? The utopia of the subject's integrity? This utopian proposal is, at the same time, paradoxical, due to its impossibility, considering that, once physical, psychological or moral integrity is violated, it can never be recovered. To respond to this issue, we propose a common analytical tool for testimonial narratives that report childhood experiences in exile. In this process, we consider the presence of 4 (four) analysis categories. They are: 1) Motivation (for the trip); 2) The Trip; 3) The Stay; 4) The Return. In the analysis of the narratives of the research corpora, from the four proposed categories, we verified that the exile experience of the second generation is linked to a set of elements that point to the way in which the dictatorial state constituted itself as a promoter of violation of fundamental rights of children and that, therefore, utopia is, in the same measure, an unrealizable project. Thus, this study is of fundamental importance for us to present our theoretical contribution to exile studies, as well as to propose an analysis instrument that could be used by other researchers in similar research bodies.