Intertextuality and estrangement in "Amor de Clarice", by Rui Torres

Abstract

In avant-garde literature, the commonplace “all works engender many readings” is twice at risk: the risk of imploding, overwhelmed by texts that do not allow any reading (or that are not supposed to do it), due to their formal hermeticism; or the risk of exploding, owing to the centrifugal pressure of works that do not remain the same even in material terms. We speak here of these ever-shifting works, as aporias of literary readings in the 21^st century, where structural innovations in texts go hand in hand with technical innovations that permit material changes in texts. In the case of cyberliterature, this utterance is even more relevant, since computer resources, increasingly sophisticated, claim for an unthought-of poetic, multiple in figurations and readings, due to the ever-shifting condition of its substance. In this article, we analyze Amor de Clarice, by the Portuguese poet Rui Torres. By means of varied digital technoaesthetic resources, this work potencializes the adage “all works engender many readings”, as it re-reads the short story “Amor”, by Clarice Lispector, through a computational discursive materiality that dissolves and changes after every click on the mouse. Thereby, this dictum overcomes academia commonsenses and, through algorithmic means, recaptures a potential that lies only in art as an aesthetical estrangement – the proposal of any re-reading after all.