Manifestações do cômico em romances de Bernardine Evaristo

Abstract

This thesis seeks to reflect on the intersection between laughter and identity in two novels by Bernardine Evaristo, a black writer whose writing focuses on the representation of issues linked to migratory flows. Blonde Roots (2010) and Girl, Woman, Others (2020) were chosen for analysis. The first stages slavery through satire, in which there is an inversion in the roles of slave and master narrated by Doris and Kaga. The second reflects on the intersection of the lives of several black characters, most of them women, who face situations of vulnerability and violence. In each of them, the clash between groups is frequent, highlighting situations of inclusion and exclusion. At the same time, attempts at inclusion lead to the emergence of agency. The method of analysis in this research consists of observing comic manifestations in the following spheres: memorial impulses, hegemonic thinking, authority figures, gender roles, signs of agency and formulations of subjectivity. To this end, we use the theoretical propositions and concepts of Mikhail Bakhtin (1987), Henri Bergson (2018) and Vladimir Propp (1992), among others, in order to understand the concept of comic used in Evaristo's novels. With regard to the field of identities and the discussion of inclusion and exclusion, voices such as Bauman (2005), Appiah (2018), Dijk (1998), Palumbo-Liu (2000) and Silver (1994) are fundamental to understanding the concept of laughter in Evaristo's novels. With regard to the field of identities and the discussion on inclusion and exclusion, voices such as Bauman (2005), Appiah (2018), Dijk (1998), Palumbo-Liu (2000) and Silver (1994) are fundamental to understanding the relationship between the concepts. In short, the aim is to discuss how these discussions result in the use of the comic as a mechanism to represent repression.