Self-mutilation in Uma Duas, by Eliane Brum

Abstract

Uma Duas, first novel by Eliane Brum, published in 2011, it’s composed by diverse violence setting’s entangled in the conflicting relationship between mother and daughter, which both of them divide and dispute the narrative focus. From the point of view of the novel’s setting, the narrative promotes a metalinguistic reflection, by the way that the narrator reflects about the intricate process of creation and the pathos, also, deposits in the nomadic act of writing several attempts of existing (and narrate). Based on theoretical assumptions of Lacanian materialism, as of the studies from the slovenian philosoher Slavoj Žižek about violence, in dialogue with contemporary theories of romance, this article is proposed to analyze and reflect about one of the many types of violence which composes the novel, in this case, the self-mutilation. Due to the treatment hyperrealistic of violence that permeates the novel, it was decided to do a episodic clipping, in which allows reflections that goes beyond the theme. The episode under clipping approach the self-mutilation of Laura (daughter) as a denial of her body – that exists in transhipment of Maria Lúcia (mother) – and the desire of Laura with it’s cutting tool, on a process of sexualization of the act of violence, until the attempt to writing’s emancipation. Therefore, used as theorical reference, mainly, Hutcheon (1991), Agamben (2007), Rancière (2017) and Perrone-Moisés (2016), about the contemporary romance, and Slavoj Žižek (2014), which refers to the violence studies about the Lacanian materialism perspective.