Escrevivência and dialogism: an bakhtiniana analysis of Conceição Evaristo's tales

Abstract

The general objective of the research that resulted in this dissertation was to investigate writing in short stories by the Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo, based on the Bakhtinian categories of dialogism, style and heterodiscourse, and, to this end, we used the postulates of the Bakhtin Circle as a theoretical contribution. For data selection and analysis, a qualitative methodology was adopted. Firstly, we read two works by Conceição Evaristo, composed of short stories, namely: Insubmissas Lágrimas de Mulheres and Olhos d'água, both from 2016. Having done this, we used an analysis category called gallery of women, a term coined by Gomes (2016), which refers to the various Evaristian female characters. Subsequently, we used a subjective criterion to choose the stories, but we observed the echoes of different social voices among the profuse themes that resonated in the narratives. And, with that, we chose a short story from each work to compose our corpus. We highlight the importance of studying the texts of this writer, in order to question the Brazilian-centered canon, since she is a black woman who talks about herself, her experiences and the reality in which she is circumscribed, whose characters portray the reality seen /experienced by its people and, thus, distance black literature from the reductionist tenor of literature in general. The analysis has indicated that the style of writing, marked by Evaristo's literary approach, was outlined in the narratives, so that fiction and reality are (con)fused. Furthermore, a fruitful heterodiscursive and dialogical texture was noted in the stories, whose social voices echoed and demarcated socio-historical-political-ideological positions in a decolonial bias.