A LITERATURA NO LAMPIÃO DA ESQUINA

UM LUGAR DE PARATOPIA

Abstract

Lampião da Esquina was an alternative newspaper from Rio that circulated in Brazil between 1978 and 1981, concomitant with the political “opening” of the Brazilian dictatorial regime. In this exhibition, we intend to observe how the body and desire occur in the poetics of these hitherto chthonic writers (Leila Míccolis, Franklin Jorge, Cassandra Rios, Renata Pallotini, Mário Faustino...) amidst the cis-straight dictatorship -military (AFONSO-ROCHA, 2021), who probably wrote with the intention of not disappearing (FOUCAULT, 2015). Maingueneau (2006), points out that paratopia is a non-place, with the literary statement being a constituent discourse that is validated by an enunciative scene – in the case of the authors present in the “literature” section of Lampião da Esquina, the dictatorship is a kind of “order of discourse” that (in)validates the experiences of subjects with conflicting sexualities. And through performativity (BUTLER, 1990) these underground writers deviate from the regularizing norms in the midst of the dictatorial regime and end up contributing to the production/preservation of an LGBTQIA+ memory in Brazil – given that the advent of Lampião da Esquina occurs in the same period of emergence of the first organized groups of gays/lesbians (Somos and Galf) in search of their rights as citizens.