Desempacotando a biblioteca de Valêncio Xavier: permanência e rupturas em O mez da grippe

Abstract

The present thesis reflects on the poetics of appropriation as continuous life in the literary work O Mez da Grippe (The Flu Month, own translation) by Valêncio Xavier (1981), in which mnemonic spectra of the form appear through permanence and rupture. Based on the relations between image and text, the here established investigation aims to answer, on one hand, how Valêncio Xavier allows the survival of his library’s verbal-visual object’s images, embracing their discontinuities and anachronisms. On the other hand, this thesis attempts to capture the power of appropriation which Valêncio impresses on his nymphs through the ready-made style, montage and collage. In order to conduct such research, we must inquire: how does Valêncio’s library engender routes of reading and writing in O Mez da Grippe? How does his writing incorporate preexisting forms? For the purpose of answering these questions, we assume appropriation is a poetic procedure of return, creator of a different spacetime in O Mez da Grippe. We also suggest the novel in question is fashioned on the grounds of the arts. This work’s critical theoretical foundation relies on Walter Benjamin’s concepts collection and aura, Nicolas Bourriaud’s notion of postproduction as well as on Aby Warburg’s phatos formula. Furthermore, the present study stresses that Valêncio, as a collector, architects his poetics of appropriation so as to carve his viral literature on the tradition of literary works which carry the mark of disaster within