THE LOSS OF THE NARRATOR'S AUTHORITY AS A FORMAL RESOURCE IN THE REPRESENTATION OF VIOLENCE IN K. – RELATO DE UMA BUSCA, BY BERNARDO KUCINSKI

Abstract

This article defends the hypothesis that the work K. – relato de uma busca, by Bernardo Kucinski, promotes the loss of the omniscient narrator’s authority as a formal resource in the representation of the military regime of 1964-1985 violence. We point out two structural elements in the work: the narrator’s authority and the novel’s testimonial content. For this, we performed the verification of the aesthetic resources used in the work. In order to understand the relationship between authority, violence, and power, we discuss the ideas of Arendt (2016, 2020), Benjamin (1986) and Agamben (2004). In dialogue with Seligmann-Silva (2008, 2010), we coined the concept of “testimonial content” to understand the relationship between testimony and fiction. Benjamin (2012) made it possible to read against the narrative, while also allowing a critical look at the progress history as the catastrophes’ accumulation. In the analysis of the novel, we find that the loss of authority by the external narrator provokes a renewed perception of violence scenes, because, when following the facts’ presentation under the lens of the first-person narrators, the reader has a view “from inside” the events. The alternation of narrative focus – sometimes external, sometimes internal – also promotes a multifaceted perspective of the violence representation.