Signos, códigos e estratégias literárias da negrura e da brancura na literatura brasileira

Abstract

In her monograph, Playing in the Dark. Whiteness and the Literary Imagination., Toni Morrison (1993) analyses two entities blackness and whiteness that permeate the society and literature of the United States. Blackness, through diverse rhetorical, narrative and symbolic literary edifices, reduces and devalues black people; while whiteness promotes and valorizes the beauty, culture, religion and customs that are designated as being white. The present study develops the investigation of whiteness and blackness in Brazilian literature. In Brazil, the white elite has used an ideology that presents a miscegenated, national image to unite the country; later using this image to promote Brazil as a racial democracy. However, our findings reveal that despite the promotion of miscegenated racial imagery, an esthetic has developed within Brazilian literature and other cultural practices that values the beauty, values and conduct connected with whiteness more than of those connected with blackness. The racially miscegenated, social and literary constructs are highly ambiguous, presenting this sphere as a transitory middle ground that both includes and excludes. In this study, we look at a small profile of Brazilian literary works that contribute to the construction of the blackness, whiteness and miscegenation entities, while also commenting on the development of opposing literary currents that deconstruct and counter the propagation of these entities.