Uma história da violência: reciprocidade e formação de comunidades em Facundo e O Guarani

Abstract

Twelve years apart from each other, Facundo o civilización y barbarie (1845), by the Argentinian Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and O Guarani (1857), by the Brazilian José de Alencar, are united both by their association with the foundation of their respective national literatures and their keen perception of violence even though this perception is associated to certain impasses which will define the space where a national literature can exist. Starting from a fascination with the jaguar as a natural symbol of unfettered violence, the two works, read against one another, outline the reciprocity pervading this violence. Thus they are unable to avoid the question of how to eventually contain it. The answer, suggested by René Girard s scapegoat mechanism, lies in a violent containment of violence, which becomes paradoxical as it attempts to direct it to a target while the same attempt, once revealed, can at best look like a form of hypocrisy. The imagined community that is the modern nation would like to believe it is founded upon a legitimate violence, or even in an absence of violence, but at the same time it cannot stop seeing violence, undermining it own cohesion. As it cannot leave this impasse, it keeps re-narrating itself