Subaltern Writings

‘Subaltern Writings’ focuses on one of the most important Brazilian novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, Graciliano Ramos, and critically examines two of his novels, Caetés and Angústia. The analysis is based on the premise that the reader must bring to the forefront the notion of a subject that is close to non-subjectivity and must develop heterodox forms of cultural production as Ramos himself sketches them. Rather than insisting on the protagonists' assumed mediocrity or derangement, which has been the norm in previous critical readings of the novels, ‘Subaltern Writings’ reconstructs how their attempts at composing fictional texts constitute examples of subaltern approaches, often standing alongside «high» cultural production. Unable to enter a circuit of literary writing that silences subaltern speakers, the novels' protagonists create narratives that, instead of becoming finished objects of consumption, end up as fragments or notes. In this sense, ‘Subaltern Writings’ consists of exercises in reading an object that resists becoming one. This book will be of great interest to researchers and students of Luso-Brazilian and Latin American studies.