ARTISTIC TRUTH AND POLITICAL RESISTANCE IN KAFKA AND THE QUEERMUSEUM

Abstract

In the current context of rapid advance of the conservative forces and the progressive deterioration of the democratic bases that underlie the Brazilian State, it is of the utmost importance to revisit two major works. They are the critical reinterpretation of “The artist of hunger”, a story from the last composing era of Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924), and the Essay “The Right to Literature”, seminal text by Antonio Candido. When we understand the craft of fasting as an allegory of artistic making and from the artist's truth, who does not succumb to the culture and entertainment industry, the resistance assumed by this “starving artist” illustrates the anguish that affects the modern man, immersed in the contradictions between technological progress and social exclusion. Such narrative is also in line with the episode of censorship of the exhibition “Queermuseu - Cartography of Difference in Latin America”, due to attacks by religious and conservative groups, shut down by Santander Cultural in 2017, in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul. In addition to addressing the formal innovations - in the Kafkaesque narrative in the pictorial expression of the painting “Cruzando Jesus com o Deus Shiva”, by Fernando Baril, from the afore mentioned exhibition -, we show how art and literature set up powerful and humanizing instruments of education and instruction, in addition to the critical apprehension of reality and political engagement.

Keywords: Franz Kafka. Queermuseum. Antonio Candido. Art. Resistance.