Construção e administração de narrativas do si em O Simpatizante, de Viet Thanh Nguyen

Abstract

The present thesis aims to investigate the narratives of self that give sense of meaning and belongingness to the characters of the novel The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2017), mainly on the narrator protagonist, seeing how elements of ambiguity are managed by them in their socialization spaces. Therefore, Stuart Hall’s (2014) propositions around identity and differences guide this analysis as major concepts, in consideration of the usage of language and its relational character in the processes of inclusion and exclusion of the other (WOODWARD, 2014). Nguyen’s literary work stages Vietnamese refugees in the United States during the end of the Vietnam War making contact with a new social space, characterized by both diversified characters and social practices, from transnational flows of socialization and immigration. The narrative voice presents himself as a nameless protagonist that needs to exercise his voice in order to survive, executing it through the writing of a confession, required by their captors when he returns to Vietnam. As well as the protagonist, its narrative construction is pervaded by elements of ambiguity, which are constantly stressed out according to the context that the character is inserted. The analysis method is composed by observation of socialization dynamics through two main axes, namely the discursive assumptions and the discursive negotiations. Accordingly, the theoretical and conceptual propositions by Luciano dos Santos (2011) about cultural identities are taken into account, thinking about what the author proposes as closed identities in terms of discursive assumptions, and the open identities as discursive negotiations. In this way, the opening focus of analysis is the transnational context, moving to the national, ethnic-cultural, and finally, to the other subjectivities of the self, which need to be organized and converted into narratives of the self, having in mind the contemporary social context in which the identity guiding models are constantly displaced (HALL, 2006). In sum, it seeks to discuss how ambiguity becomes an ally of minority groups to oppose the hegemonic narratives.