Representações do racismo estrutural na literatura brasileira contemporânea: um estudo sobre Cidade de Deus, Capão Pecado e Torto Arado.

Abstract

This undergraduate thesis has the general objective of analyzing how structural racism is represented in contemporary Brazilian literature, based on the works Cidade de Deus, by Paulo Lins, Capão Pecado, by Ferréz, and Torto Arado, by Itamar Vieira Júnior. The research is grounded in the dialectical method and in François Hartog’s theory of the “rhetoric of alterity,” and it draws on contributions from authors such as Silvio Almeida, Lilia Schwarcz, and Djamila Ribeiro to understand racism as a historical, institutional, and symbolic structure. Specifically, the study aims to discuss the formation of structural racism in Brazil and its intersections with class, gender, territory, and labor; to examine the modes of representing the other in the three narratives, highlighting the tension between a rhetoric of servitude and a rhetoric of resistance; and to investigate how literary language and the construction of territories produce counter-narratives to the myth of racial democracy. The analysis shows that, although situated in distinct contexts, these works converge in denouncing post-slavery continuities and in affirming peripheral and rural voices as speaking subjects, thus confirming the hypothesis that these narratives not only reflect structural racism but also elaborate new forms of memory, identity, and resistance.