Body, veridiction and testimony in Memórias do Cárcere, by Graciliano Ramos

Abstract

In the present article, we will deal with a question concerning the veridictory dimension of discourses, not yet explored in semiotics, in our view: the imbrication (neutralization?) between subjective and objective regimes of veridiction present in the autobiographical discourse. Our discussion will be based on the work Memórias do Cárcere (1953), by Graciliano Ramos, which raises numerous questions about its status as “reality”. This desideratum will take place in dialogue with authors such as Jacques Fontanille, especially in his work Corpo e sentido; Izidoro Blikstein, and his notion of subjective truth; and Wander Melo Miranda, in his work Corpos escritos, dedicated to the theme in the work of Graciliano Ramos under study. The purpose of this article is to show that the veridical peculiarity of the Alagoas writer's text is affirmed not through an objectifying enunciation (more in the order of "record", of adequacy to the facts), but through the aesthetic dimension of his work, through the imbrication between the memorial and the literary and by the figurative force of the sensible and the aesthesia. These elements would put us in the face of a narration more of the becoming of suffering, of someone who “felt in their skin” the pain, than a documentary account of the events lived in prison.