A figuração da cidade em “Os versos satânicos”, de Salman Rushdie

Abstract

This article analyses the manifestations of the figuration of the city in the narrative of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (1998). To achieve this scope, the analysis appropriated the concepts of symbolic space (SAID, 2007; TUAN, 1980; LEFEBVRE, 1991), and the non événementielle history (LE GOFF, 1990) applied with the spatial trialetic model (SOJA, 1996). Urbanity is such an inherent feature of social organization and modern life that thinking about it beyond immediacy becomes a complex effort of abstraction. Thus, in the contemporary context, the city is seen as a privileged space in which the post-modern subject's identity crises are catalyzed, both in terms of assimilation (topophilia) and spatial repulsion. The use of this interdisciplinary methodology provided a more detailed understanding of spatial representation in the Rushdian style. The proposals of symbolic geography and non-événementielle history are inserted in the context of the production of analytical categories that provide a systematic apprehension of the manifestations of urban space within the fictional environment of The Satanic Verses.