Um farol no meio do sertão: literatura fânone e comunidades de leitores do IFRN como articuladores de tecituras polifônicas

Abstract

This work aims to recognize the process of identity construction resulting from the individuals’ participation in reading communities at the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN), located in the rural area of the state. Thus, we start from the conception that the practice of reading, even when solitary, involves a series of negotiations among the reader, author, characters, and the social backgrounds that surround them, transforming this practice into a hunting activity (Certeau, 2014) and highlighting the dialogical nature of utterances, as proposed by Bakhtin and his circle of scholars. When observing the reading process in the IFRN reading communities, the phenomenon gains breadth by acknowledging the context of the individuals involved in these practices. This is because when they are residents of small towns in the countryside, they are immersed in a particular reality that often restricts their possibilities of identity. In this way, reading for many students is a way of seeing and performing – in a fictional way – what they themselves are, but cannot talk about or do not have references to in their living environment. In order to understand this clash that evokes the voices of the readers, the heroes of the works read, those who make up the school community, and ultimately, those who shape the cities and regions where IFRN is located, it is crucial to discuss polyphony (Bakhtin, 2015a) to understand how this multiplicity of voices in equipollence constructs and reconstructs the identities of the individuals who go through this process. In an attempt to understand this process, interviews will be conducted with twelve individuals involved in this process, including nine former students who participated in reading communities at IFRN, and three professors who were involved in these projects. These reports will be transformed into written texts, and using the methodological process of microhistory (Ginzburg, 2006) and anchored in Bakhtin's and the circle's theories, particularly regarding polyphony, we will problematize the implications of these reading communities for the construction of identities of the individuals involved in them. At the end of the investigation, we understand that the interior cities of Rio Grande do Norte, due to their idyllic chronotope, attempt to restrain certain identity performances. These performances rely on other subversive vectors, such as IFRN and the communities of readers, to pave possible paths of being and acting as one is in these places. Furthermore, it became evident that these discursive processes occurring among the city, the school, and reading practices generate a discursive arena where various voices engage in negotiations of truth, establishing a large polyphonic chorus that can be represented through the narratives of those who participated in these processes. These narratives elucidate the unfinished and ideological nature of these individuals