The handmaid's tale à luz do confroencontro dialógico entre Mikhail Bakhtin e Walter Benjamin: uma leitura crítica do romance e sua adaptação para a série televisiva

Abstract

We aim to create a critical reading approach to the novel The Handmaid's Tale (1996) by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and its homonymous adaptation for the TV series produced by Bruce Miller (2017-), in the light of the contrast-dialogue between Walter Benjamin and Mikhail Bakhtin, considering the categories of language and discourse. To this end, the specific objectives are: to discuss the theory of language in Benjamin and Bakhtin, considering the accordance and dissonance in their thought; to analyze how the language, from the point of view of Benjamin and Bakhtin, is rescued through the actions of the characters in the novel The handmaid’s tale (1996) and its adaptation to the TV series; to explore the categories of closed and disclosed discourses in the theoretical thought of Walter Benjamin and Mikhail Bakhtin; to investigate how the closed discourses in the novel The handmaid’s tale (1996) and its adaptation to the TV series are desecrated by the disclosed discourses, considering the thought of Benjamin and Bakhtin. In methodological terms, since our corpus is constituted of a series and a novel, we will analyze them in the light of critical literary and cultural theories, using qualitative bibliographical research with an exploratory character as the technical procedure. The theoretical framework was the following: to discuss language and discourse we used the work of Mikhail Bakhtin (1987, 2014, 2015, 2018a, 2018b, 2019); and the writings of Walter Benjamin (1994, 2013, 2020). By way of conclusion, the critical reading of the novel The Handmaid's Tale (1996) and its adaptation for the series of the same name in the light of the dialogical confrontation between Benjamin and Bakhtin allowed us to identify the reification of the use of language by the dictatorship of Gilead as a strategy of oppression and civil domination, as well as the redemption of this language through the disruptive actions of the characters who stood up to the system. In terms of discourse, we detected in the characters' speech the impoverishment of verbal communication between individuals, as well as closed discourses originating from the dictatorship of Gilead which prevented individuals from elaborating their positions against the system, just as it was possible to see open discourses in the words of the characters who stood up to the oppression of the figures representing the power of Gilead. The dialogical confrontation between Walter Benjamin and Mikhail Bakhtin proved to be productive, as it was possible to find points of encounter and confrontation in the categories of language and discourse: in "language" we see that for Bakhtin, language is dialogical, full of social voices; for Benjamin, it is only in the interrelationship with the other that significant and creative potential is manifested. As far as discourse is concerned, Bakhtin sees it as heterodiscursive, tense with opinions, with the voices of others; in Benjamin, discursive openness occurs in the libertarian tone of technical reproducibility, of revolutionary history, for example.