Graciliano Ramos' prisons of memory

This study intends to show how the spiritual activity, when treating the memory as an instrument of complaint, in Graciliano Ramos’ Memórias do cárcere, faces the challenge of interacting with elements that can make it a prisoner of itself in the selection and application of images in the literary creation process; elements such as the carceral automatism, the egotism and the blind accession to the external reality.  

"From the hidden side of dictatorship to the filter of memory: contemporary Brazilian literature - resistance and exile"

The article analyzes several aspects related to memoirs texts from the banished people of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985), mainly the domino effect of the narratives about resistance, the intertextuality among these works and the role of the banished ones in the effort of constructing a revolution which passed over national limits. Using autobiographical works such as the trilogy started by Fernando Gabeira with O que é isso, companheiro? [What is this, comrade?], the narratives of Alfredo Sirkis (Os carbonários and Roleta chilena) [The carbonari and Chilean roulette], Flávio Tavares (Memórias do esquecimento) [Memoirs of forgetfulness], Alex Polari (Em busca do tesouro) [In search of the treasure], and Carlos Eugênio Paz (Viagem à luta armada) [Trip to the armed struggle], among others, and as theoretical references authors like Andreas Huyssen, Beatriz Sarlo, Leonor Arfuch, Tzvetan Todorov and Michael Pollak, the article aims at reflecting about the memories of the banished and the political prisoners as a bruising affirmation of a crucial period of the Brazilian History and collective memory.

The productions of sense about “índia” tattoo

The present proposal aims at to reflect, in the scope of the Discourse Analysis (AD) of Pêcheux tradition, about differents interpretations of the “índia” tattoo. More accurately, we treat of the two dissimilar interpretations: the first one was presented by “Cartilha de Orientação Policial – Tatuagens: Desvendando Segredos” (2011), produced by the Military Policy of Bahia State that brings to its readers the direction attributed to some tattoos; and the second, it is that we do, from a semi-structured oral interview realized with a citizen who has the “índia” tattoo materialized on his body and that does not know about the Cartilha. We clarify beforehand, that we conceive a tattoo as a text that produce discourses. Made this registration, we point out that in this study we understand there are two distinct instances, that produce and mobilize directions that are also affected by the distinct imaginary. Thus, our objective is to oppose the predetermined direction by the Cartilha with the one that we could produce from the analysis of the interview of the tattooed citizen about his tattoo. From lectures and other works realized by us, we understand that the tattoo means and that the senses are not only in drawing, but beyond it. In this perspective, we call attention to the fact that as the words are not endowed with a sense a priori, as proposed by the pecheuxtiano legacy, as the tattoos that process the meaning production also do not let us predetermine senses in authoritarian form. In reading/interpretation of a tattoo, multiple interpretations can be produced, depending on the memory effects that are mobilized at the moment. New interpretations can be projected and this discursive work of attribution of directions is one that can influence the reader society in (pre)concepts about the tattooed citizen and/or with the tattoo that he carries in his body.

PATHWAY IN MEMORY: RELATIONS BETWEEN THE VERBAL AND VISUAL IN INFOGRAPHIC

The relationship between verbal and visual materiality in printed infographics is provided. The manner the verbal significant updates certain discursive memories may be understood when related to the visual significant is thus investigated. Whereas the object under investigation is an infographic of the magazine Saúde titled The virus that combats viruses; the analysis, which is based on a materialist theoretical stance, triggers the notions of memory and materiality. Content effect reiterates the functioning of the linguistic sign through the language’s literality within the word-thing relationship and it establishes itself within the visual stance while producing faithful effects with the real. When one investigates the manner discursive memory performs the relationship between the verbal and the visual in infographics, one understands that this relationship is established within the context of incompleteness of the above-mentioned types of materiality. It also occurs within the equivocation that verbal materiality may be complemented by the visual or that the image may faithfully represent the real. The formulation of infographics demands-updates-reaffirms a verbal faithfulness with the visual within a content relationship. Verbal interweaving (in explicatory graphics) with images (the visual) produces meaning effects that project language as an instrument, ideal in its transparency, and literally reveals the thing to which it refers.