Memórias Quase Póstumas de um Ex-torturador:

um homem torturado pelo ato de torturar

Abstract

Testimony literature has brought many reflections on the act of narrating traumatic events. It encompasses literary productions that emerged from memories narrated by those who lived under the rule of authoritarian regimes. Thus, these narratives sometimes come from those who suffered a trauma, or simply witnessed a cycle of atrocities, such as those of Nazi Germany, the period between wars, military dictatorships, among others. In this sense, this work seeks to make a brief outline of these events, pointing out in the light of Agamben (2008), Freud (2010), Seligmann-Silva (2008), Sarlo (2007), the issue of memory, testimony, traumatic experiences, including Pedro’s character , investigator, torturer of the Vargas dictatorship in Brazil and victim of his own atrocities throughout João Bosco Maia's narrative “Almost Posthumous Memoirs of a Former Torturer”. This investigation also reveals, in the light of Iser (1996), how much, based on reader expectations, the reader of traumatic narratives can (re)act in the act of reading, becoming indignant at the events narrated in the text. It confirms, by Reader Response Theory, that a literary work occurs in the mutual relationship between the reader and the text and that the meaning of the work is constructed through a relationship between the reader and the text, within a particular reading context .