De vencedores a vencidos: o desmonte da identidade nacional na prosa de António Lobo Antunes

Abstract

In order to analyze the process of deterioration of a given model of Portuguese national identity, this research focuses on the second novel published by António Lobo Antunes, Os Cus de Judas (1979). In this way, the period of the Colonial War and the castration of individual liberties in the Estado Novo in Portugal are recalled, to understand, from the experiences of the central character of this work, how in this narrative the nationalist discourse had been refracted and, to that extent, had been corrupted in the visions of a ruined present that the literary text presents. Therefore, inherent in the study of a narrative in which a broad dialogical process prevails, mainly due to the contentious attitude of the official discourses in the texts, is that the theoretical basis of this research is carried out, substantially, from the postulates of the Circle of Bakhtin (Mikhail Bakhtin; Valentin Volochínov; Pavel Medviédev). In this sense, the dialogism is evidenced in its contribution to the understanding of the connection established between the dismantling of the national identity and the aesthetic formalization of the novel. In addition, other studies that deal with the question of national identity, for example, Stuart Hall (1997), Bauman (2005), besides the considerations of Eduardo Lourenço (2001, 2016; 2018) on the Portuguese context, in a more specific way, among other dialogues with pertinent authors to this research, are observed, like the readings of Seixo (2002), Arnaut (2009), Cardoso (2011; 2016) regarding a specialized critique of Antunian’s work. In this sense, a set of voices is highlighted so that helps us understand how the dismantling of the nationality feeling is processed so that its marks are felt on and by the narrative bias of the literary text in focus.