ELIANA ALVES CRUZ AND GILBERTO FREYRE: THE SLAVERY BETWEEN REPRESENTATION AND SILENCING OF THE ENSLAVED SUBJECT

A ESCRAVIDÃO ENTRE REPRESENTAÇÃO E SILENCIAMENTO DO SUJEITO ESCRAVIZADO

Abstract

The present study of the novel O crime do cais do Valongo (2018), by Eliana Alves Cruz, questions the perspective of Gilberto Freyre, mainly on the notion of a mild slavery, developed in his master’s thesis Social life in Brazil in the middle of the 19th century (1922). Sensitive to the deep ambivalences that constitute the discourse on slavery, the reflection demonstrates how the discourse itself constructs and deconstructs arbitrariness, in which the black subject does not only become “Other”, but also “Otherness itself” (KILOMBA, 2019). Thus, the study proposes investigate in what terms the fictional discourse responds to the processes of silencing and denial of subjectivity.