AMBIVALENCES IDENTITY IN THE BROTHERS, MILTON HATOUM

This article presents a reading of the novel The Brothers, by Milton Hatoum, focused on the narrator’s condition and his identity implications. Nael, the protagonist narrator, grew blended to a family of his own and random at the same time, without knowing his space amongst the group. The uncertainty of his origins have shaped a floating identity between the position of the son/grandson and the position of the employee aggregated to the group. The ambivalences of this identity are narrated searching for answers, the stabilization of Nael’s identity space. To this end, the main instrument is the memory, the only mean to resignify the past and fulfill the lack of wholeness which accompanies Nael: the wholeness is achieved with the agitation of the past, the memories and especially, the silences and the family forgetfulness. The reflections about the possible identity positions of the narrator find support in the theoretical concepts of memory and identity from a sociological and anthropological perspective. Key words: memory; identity; The Brothers.

EXPERIENCE AND HISTORY IN EDMUND WHITE, BERNARDO CARVALHO AND MILTON HATOUM’S NARRATIVES

This article is a comparative study of three fictionists: Edmund White, Bernardo Carvalho and Milton Hatoum. We focus on the concepts of experience to investigate some modes of fictional constructions that allows us to say that a singular panorama of contemporary prose can be seen in a horizon where autobiography and history are key issues in the three authour’s poetics. Therefore literary theory will help us find theoretical paths towards what we name a poetics of mobility and closure at work in the fiction of these authours. Walter Benjamin, Phillipe Lejeune, Beatriz Sarlo and Jeanne Marie Gagnebin, amongst other thinkers, will guide theoretically our study.