Uma poética do genocídio antinegro:

reflexões acerca da caracterização e do destino da personagem negra na literatura brasileira

Abstract

Our research mobilizes the concept of Poetics of Genocide developed by Antônio Paulo Graça (1998) to understand the representative and narrative treatment traditionally given to black people in Brazilian literature. Based on the aforementioned author's formulations, added to critical works that investigated the black character in Brazilian literature, we seek to present a brief overview of strategies and aesthetic procedures reiterated by different works and authors of the national canon that come to denounce an assimilated anti-black imaginary, of more or less explicitly, through literary productions. To prepare this panorama, which aims to demonstrate the aesthetic composition of the aforementioned anti-black genocidal imaginary, we rely on the methods used by Graça, who highlighted in his analysis of Indianist novels – considering that its scope is that of an anti-indigenous imaginary – the characterization and narrative destiny of indigenous characters. In parallel to the contributions of Graça (1998), we base our understanding of anti-black genocide and its expression in the products of culture on the testimonial essays of Abdias Nascimento (2016) who internationally promoted the denunciation of the extermination of the black Brazilian people.