Writings of roughness: a reading of "Memories from Prison", by Graciliano Ramos

Abstract

Starting from three verbs used in the last paragraph of the first chapter in the book — sneak, escape, hide — revealing of a game set up the the textual "I", I am interested in investigating, within the text construction, the position of the narrator. Considering the discourse as the place of interaction between social and individual, where multiple "I's" move, between the syntax of law and the law of syntax, the goal is to examine the transit of this "I", sometimes owner, sometimes owned by the cat and dog chase, within this playwright/prison imprinted in the text, a game which (un) veils its rules. Viewing the prison and its space as a metonymy of other spaces, I explore how the mutilated body and the plagued social construction become writings of roughness. Not only roughness from society, but also that of the "I", translated into the dry mouth, the rough word, the slow, difficult writing, as well as into the abscess growing under the index finger nail, a materialization of social and existential abscess.