Identidade, exílio e memória: representações da cultura árabe na ficção brasileira contemporânea

Abstract

Bringing forward how the Arab Culture or the Arab Immigrant was pictured by the Brazilian Literature we wish to reflect about the Brazilian contemporary fiction that, diferently from the previous periods, cast a deeper view on the matter, allowing the reinterpretation of the arab immigrants social insertion in the brazilian culture specialy for descendents of first and second generations. The chosen corpus is assembled from two narratives: the romance Dois irmãos (2000), writen by Milton Assi Hatoum(*1950-), son of Syrian-Lebanese immigrants and born in Manaus, Amazonas; and the narrative O enigma de Qaf (2004), from Alberto Moussa(*1961-), grandson of Arab immigrants. Our research tries to demonstrate that the analisys of fictional pieces of immigrant s descendants writers allows a a deep view of the migration condition struggles, but in a different perspective of the stereotyped concept or even a theme intrinsically pervaded with prejudice. We see the Literature as the needed and possible space to bring forth other, new views of the arab culture and, as consequence, set aside the only history already outlined by the european colonists, the history set on school books, spread on the media and in the general history, where the arab is the terrorist fundamentalist, inhuman, woman opressors, the raghead tenant that collects the money harshly, the stingy bagman. We try, therefore, to adopt a post-colonial bias, accordingly with the studies of Eloínia Patri dos Santos (2005), seeking that, under that bias, the colonized can describe his experience following his own view, his own version, his own voice. The analisys is formulate on three axes: the identity s ethos, the exile s pathos and the memory s logos. With this triaxial aproach we intend to lay enphasis the construction, in both romances, of a cultural enrichment space by means of characters without folklore encased exaggerations, in a exoticism free atmosphere, where the thematization of the Arab rites unrestrained by stereotypes, and, mainly, the greatest legacy of the arab culture for the humankind: its language. In this fashion, let us seek to contribute for a bigger understanding of the brazilian contemporary fiction and, beyond, collaborate with the researches on representations and figuration of the arab produced in Brasil