Violência e resistência no discurso de Saramago: anotações semióticas

Abstract

This study focuses on the theme of violence in the literary work of José Saramago, Portuguese writer, so far the only one to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in Portuguese. Of all titles of this author, the following examples were separated for the present analysis, as they are representative of significant moments of his literary maturity: Levantado do Chão (1980), that one only for the introductory methodological exemplification, O ano de 1993 (1975), Memorial do Convento (1982) and Ensaio sobre a cegueira (1995). The approach is based on analytical categories of Semiotics founded by Algirdas Julien Greimas, according to which any text has three levels of abstraction in the production of meaning: the fundamental level, the level of narrative and the discursive level. In the discursive level, it seems that Saramago’s text reiterates themes and figures that confirm the ideological support of this writer to the interests of the oppressed classes in their historic mission of emancipation. In the process, women play a leading role in Saramago’s text. On the narrative level, the discursive effect is accomplished by the representation of a subject that seeks to oppose values that are semantically identified with human dignity. In the fundamental level of production of meaning, Saramago’s text is based on the contradictory relationship between oppression and liberation, the latter being placed in homology to life as opposed to death, and nature as opposed to culture, identified as a form of social control.