BLACKNESS IN SEGREGATION AGE: SEMIOTIC ANALISIS OF MELANCTHA, BY GERTRUDE STEIN

Abstract

This research result from a project that aims to analyse, on discursive perspective, a novel from Three Lives, by Gertrude Stein, north-american writer. The research objective is to understand how the book separate its characters by their characteristics given to them by their race. The theoretical validity is based by cultural studies dialog, as Woodward (2000) and feminists theories by Bell Hooks (1981;2000) and Angela Davis (1982). To the analysis, we get semiotic theory contribution by Barros (2005) and Fiorin (2008). It privileged the character figure analysis, considering enunciator’s syntactic and semantic resources. Melanctha’s transitory among assumed benefits by her light skin and her constant search for black community’s acceptance where she lives it’s what shows the ethnic limbo, the entre-lugar where she is. As final results, we get that its characters not only had racial stereotypes that reminds from slavery where laws and segregation was built among the citizens, but also used post slavery representation which black people were subject by white population, exposed to insulting and subhuman situations, as horrid as slavery.