Being a subject in the other’s country

Abstract

This paper presents the study on migrant representations from a discursive and decolonial theoretical perspective, using the self-narrative of a Beninese migrant, who is an undergraduate student in Brazil, as a way of bringing to light silenced discourses of minoritized groups, such as that of the migrant, and getting to know a little about the identity of this subject in displacement. The French Discourse Analysis will be used as a methodological device, establishing the articulation between linguistic materiality and history, for the production of meaning. The corpus is composed of discursive excerpts of the migrant’s self-narrative from the thematic selection that characterizes regularities, among other categories of analysis based on the global semantics proposed by Dominique Maingueneau. The general objective is to analyze the identity representations that the subject builds of herself and of the other - the Brazilian people -, which emerge from her narrative, in order to discuss some traces of her subjectivity and identity and the processes of memory formation that occur, in her case, between cultures and languages. For the use of self-narrative as a possibility of building knowledge, we bring Michel Foucault’s study related to self-writing, in addition to other authors who talk about the importance of life stories. To support theoretically the notions of memory, difference and identity, we rely on cultural studies in addition to the decolonial perspective to deal with the subjugated identities of minorities. With this reflection, we understand that it is possible to break with the exclusive and Eurocentric thought, which gives discursive space and relevance only to the narratives of privileged peoples to the detriment of the dominated, of the colonizing subject to the detriment of the colonized, of the hegemonic subject to the detriment of the ordinary or " infamous” that Foucault speaks of, thus valuing the locus of speech of a black migrant and giving relevance to her invisible and silenced existence in the host country, which is often hostile to her.