From Dehumanization to Creation: the Revolution in the Anthropocene in A Nossa Alegria Chegou by Alexandra Lucas Coelho

Abstract

A Nossa Alegria Chegou by Alexandra Lucas Coelho (2018) is a novel that stands on a horizon of expectations in the face of the negative impact of human action on the planet in the Anthropocene era. Alendabar, an entirely newly created space which does not correspond to any identifiable geographic area, reifies the impact of environmental destruction in addition to the dehumanization resulting from anthropophagic and voracious capitalism. This dehumanization is reflect, on the one hand, in the objectification of the workers and, on the other hand, in the incapacity of those who have the power to feel empathy for their fellowmen. This article discusses how, in A Nossa Alegria Chegou, this violence can only be combated by other forms of violence which are, in themselves, essentially regenerating. The destruction inflicted on Alendabar is built literarily on memories of exploitation, colonialism and oppression that are present in the experience of the Global South, designed and sensed from the line of the equinox. In the reminiscences of ancestral visions and experiences of wisdom of the south, the human essence, expressed in all its fullness is recovered through a radical and violent but regenerating revolution, under the symbolic memory of ritualistic anthropophagy. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2002) stated that Oswald de Andrade's anthropophagy is a metacultural reflection that produced a truly revolutionary theory. In A Nossa Alegria Chegou, it is through the images of the devoured and released bodies that the resignification of the anthropos is reached as part of the utopia of physical, real and whole love.