Pedagogia do medo, desaparecimento e testemunho em Sobre o que não falamos, de Ana Cristina Braga Martes

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the novel Sobre o que não falamos (2023), by Ana Martins Braga Martes, based on three thematic axes: the pedagogy of fear, disappearance and testimony. The narrative deals with the childhood of a survivor of the dictatorship who has to deal with the memory of her parents and recover her own story, which is silenced by her grandparents, with whom she lives. Through the passage between childhood and adolescence, the narrator-protagonist Clara takes on the responsibility of narrating her version and offering a counterpoint to the official version of history, written by the agents of dictatorial power. To do this, she listens to her neighbors, who tell other versions of what happened to her parents. For the analysis, among the concepts covered are power agents and disappearance, by Pilar Calveiro (2013) and testimony, by Márcio Seligmann-Silva (2003, 2023). In conclusion, the novel offers a literary elaboration on the institutional silence of the community, which is part of a project of erasure and forgetting policies so that the guilty are not properly held accountable.