“ORDER”, BY LEUSA ARAUJO: SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE AND BILDUNG'S FAILURE IN TIMES OF CITIZEN-MILITARY DICTATORSHIP

Abstract

Leusa Araujo chose the historical past of the Civil-Military Dictatorship (1964-1985) as the setting for the youthful narrative of her novel Order, without place, without laughing, without speaking. As a work aimed at the youth audience, Leusa Araujo expands the look beyond the condition of those who suffered the physical experience of torture and murder, embracing the emotional dilemmas of a character whose transition from childhood to adolescence occurs precisely in the lead years of the Dictatorship. For this reason, the aim of this article was to take a critical approach to the novel based on the notion of Bildungsroman. The term Bildungsroman  becomes  well  known  when  associated  with  Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship Years (1795-1796), and has been important for understanding contemporary youth literary production, according to studies by Ceccantini (2000), Delbrassine (2006) and Cruvinel (2009). Based on the assumption of the dynamic character of Bildungsroman (MAAS, 2000), this article is guided by the hypothesis that Leusa Araujo's novel subverts and problematizes the formation process, opting for the protagonist's Bildung failure. We believe that this occurs due to the figuration of the authoritarian memory of the Civil-Military Dictatorship, so that in order to prove it, we also resort to the notion of symbolic violence by Bourdieu (1989; 2003).

Keywords: Youth literature. Leusa Araujo. Bildungsroman. Civil-Military Dictatorship. Symbolic violence.