Mulheres sob controle: uma análise do cerceamento da linguagem feminina em Vox, de Christina Dalcher

Abstract

The present study proposes an analysis of the novel Vox, by Christina Dalcher (2018), from its translation into Brazilian Portuguese by Alves Calado (2018), focusing essentially on issues of silencing women throughout history and the development of their discourse while inserted in a densely patriarchal society. Vox is characterized as a criticism of the condition of women in contemporaneity and, in belonging to the category of dystopian feminist science fiction, speculates about a somber future for women, who would lose their rights to verbal language and, consequently, to any type of language in a dystopian futuristic United States. Thus, the main objective of this article was to reflect on the depreciation of female language in the novel and on possible signs of female language limitation in contemporary society. The theoretical texts that support the discussions about discourse, gender and control within a society are represented mainly by those of Michel Foucault’s (1997), (1999a), (1999b) and (2006) and of Michelle Perrot’s (2005). We note that female silencing is historical and that even today we observe literal and symbolic silencing processes, which are mainly due to the fact that contemporary societies are part of very old patriarchal structures.