From the epic of genocide to the poetics of testimony: a reading of the verses of José de Anchieta, Renata Machado Tupinambá and Wilberth Salgueiro

Abstract

Based on the work of Jaime Ginzburg, the article starts from the idea of colonial epic as a celebration of the indigenous genocide. Focusing on the heroic poem Os feitos de Mem de Sá, we proceed to emphasize the identification of the narrator with the Christians in the war against the indigenous and to consider representations of mourning of the losses suffered by the colonizers. From discussions about the epic genre, we come to Benjaminian theory of fascism as an epic of human annihilation, as well as Adorno’s theory about the

contemporary novel as a negative epic. We also address Adorno’s lyrical theory and his idea of shared mourning, bringing it closer to Alfredo Bosi’s ideas about poetry and resistance. We bring to discussion Ginzburg’s formulations about the minimum in Adornian philosophy and Drummondian poetic, based on the idea of the traumatic incorporation of totalitarian experiences. The idea of trauma leads to the category of testimony poetry, as formulated by Salgueiro and Silva Jutgla. From the latter, we highlight the mnemonic gesture of recovering resistance poems that circulated outside the official circuits. From Salgueiro, we synthesize some of his readings about contemporary testimonial poets, emphasizing his perception of humor as a linguistic strategy of resistance, even when it witnesses pain and suffering. The categories of trauma, testimony, loss, grief and humor are mobilized, finally, for the reading of the verses of Renata Machado Tupinambá, who recall the indigenous genocide, and Wilberth Salgueiro, who satirize Jair Bolsonaro and his voters.