International Journal of Language & Literature

The Poetical Production of Political Prisoners during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship: Faced with the Problem of Representation
Dr. Nelson Martinelli Filho

Abstract
Authoritarian practices in societies reveal, as a symptom, a high rate of incarcerations due to ideological motivations and forces, whose victims are commonly called political prisoners. Despite receiving less attention than prose in this context, poetry has also become an important witness space for victims, establishing itself as a way of conserving the memory of the excluded/silenced. Among the limited vestiges of the prison experience during the Brazilian military dictatorship, poetical production, as a linguistic elaboration in the symbolic field, enables the outline of what cannot be said due to social and psychic impediments, showing the limits of language imposed in different ways. Considering this literary production, this work aims to investigate the theme of representation, in a psychoanalytic and historiographical approach, from the poetry written by political prisoners during the military dictatorship, such as Gilney Viana, José Emilson Ribeiro, Lara de Lemos, Oswald Barroso and Pedro Tierra. To support the discussion, authors such as Jacques Lacan (1988, 2009), Judith Butler (2020), Paul Ricoeur (2007) and Sigmund Freud (2010, 2011) will be consulted.

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v11n2a1