80/90’s fiction: literature and discursive epidemic

Abstract

This article intends to review part of the brazilian literary production of the 1980's, from the contradictions of a decade marked, simultaneously, by rapturing and terror. The decennium, period characterized by euphoria around the redemocratization, is also impacted by the emergence of AIDS, an event responsible for the redisciplination of the bodies — caused by the emphasis on the practice of safe sex ­—  and the stigmatization of homosexuality. In Aids e suas metáforas, Susan Sontag (1989) analyzes the imaginary around the disease, from which the consequences would be both the recrudescence of prejudice against homosexuals and the blaming of the virus’ victims. When resumed and associated to the brazilian context, Sontag’s arguments assume distinct connotations that enable a revisitation of the brazilian literature from a scope directed to the pandemic by the artistic expression (which is a perspective practically ignored by the historiography and the literary studies). From this slant, it is also possible to consider the “utility” that the insistent metaphorical explorations linked to AIDS may have supported. The development of such proposals will employ the short stories “Linda, uma história horrível” and “Depois de agosto”, both by the brazilian writer Caio Fernando Abreu (1988; 1995), as text corpus.