Cassandra Rios: a silenced voice in the military regime in Brazil

Abstract

The present article presents the preliminary results of a research in progress, which it is in its initial phase. It focuses on a simple, but symbolic goal, therefore meaningful: in times of female empowerment, it aims to withdraw from fringe and forgetfulness and to bring to the surface one of the most fervent authors in Brazil in the context of the military regime period (1964-1985): Cassandra Rios (1932-2002). Thus, it seeks to recover the story of a voice covered by silence. Rios was considered by censorship as a pornographic author, and as such, prohibited. In order to account for the proposal, a search of bibliographical and documentary sources highlights the censorship of the Department for Public Entertainment Censorship (DCDP) about the author's books, as well as the author's own books, complemented by a historiography about the theme of repression during the military regime (1964-1985), especially in the scope of cultural censorship specific to books, sustained by theoreticians like Carlos Fico, Beatriz Kushnir, Douglas Atilla Marcelino and Sandra Reimão. In a predominantly bibliographic nature, it is situated between two fields: History and Literature, characterized by the perspective of Cultural History. It is thought within encounters and mismatches of two camps from a perspective of Cultural History, from historians as Sandra Jatahy Pesavento, as well as the understanding of pornography in the historian Lynn Hunt.