FIGHT IS NEEDED

TESTIMONY AND RESISTANCE IN TORTO ARADO, BY ITAMAR VIEIRA JÚNIOR

Abstract

The testimonial literature brings relevant discussions about the need for the speeches suppressed by official history to come to light and thus the voice of those who suffered from oppression be heard. Important as a counter-historical form, that is, as an opposition to the official discourse of the regulatory bodies of power, witnessing is the way one has to present that a historical fact not only has an echoing voice, but many others that reverberate. Considering the studies on the Literature of Testimony in Latin America as the main source of analysis of this work, the present article tends to research how the testimonial content is present in the novel Torto Arado, by Itamar Vieira Júnior. The resistance of the characters, which is sometimes guided by memory, sometimes configured in the materialization of their culture, is the means by which not only they can testify about the oppressive system in which they are inserted, but also resist this system. Therefore, BOSI (2002) tends to affirm that resistance is, above all, an ethical concept, and not an aesthetic one, because for the critic, resisting is an act of not giving in to another force. By keeping the testimonial literature as a focus of interpretation, this work understands that the testimonial content, a characteristic element present in the novel Torto arado (2019), represents the revolutionary efforts of the oppressed, as stated by Alfredo Alzugarat (1994). In order to organize the conceptual cohesion that will guide the reflections on the object in question, Torto arado, this text will use the works of Márcio Seligmann-Silva (2003; 2008) e and other theorists who unfold their studies on the Literature of Testimony.