Littératures de l’Après: the contemporary extreme as a representification of omissions from the past

Abstract

The article aims to contribute to the reflection on the relationship between Comparative Literature and the so-called “post-theory”, bringing to the debate the contribution of the theoretician Johann Faerber and his recent publication: Après la littérature: écrire le contemporain (2018). To get around the worn prefix “post” (post-colonialism, post-modernism, etc.), the author calls the literatures of the contemporary extreme “littératures de l’après” (later literatures), reflecting on what could characterize such literatures, and concluding, based on studies by Dominique Viart, that regardless of the period in which they were written, the later literatures are those that resurface when it is thought that literature is dead (Todorov, Compagnon, among others). This resurgence occurs with the creation of “disconcerting” novels that are those that refuse doxa and “escape the pre-conceived meanings of the ready-to-think-cultural” (Viart, 2006, p. 13). The article focuses, in the context of Brazilian literature, on a series of novels written by women such as Conceição Evaristo, Ana Maria Gonçalves, Eliane Brum, Aline Bei, Carola Saavedra and Martha Batalha, whose works are characterized by being disconcerting and transcultural, insurgent against the invisibility and inaudibility of the generations that preceded, inventing absences, representing what had hitherto been omitted and questioning the limits of representability in literature.