As mortes reveladoras das colonialidades na poética da escritora maranhense Mariana Luz

Abstract

In order to reflect the Maranhão literature as a symbolic space of representations and themes and, mostly, bring to the surface a discussion that allows the visibility of marginalized subjects, especially bodies considered non-hegemonic by the modern/colonial/capitalist world-system /patriarchal as elderly people, people with disabilities, sick people and women, we chose the poetic work from the Maranhão writer Mariana Luz (1871-1960). Analyzing carefully the critical fortune upon the Luziana work, there was no detailed reading on how the deaths (symbolic and physical), of subordinated subjects, uncover the colonialities of Brazilian society, structured from the Matriz Colonial de Poder (MCP), in the production of this author's poetics. In light of this, to carry out this work, it was opted for the proposal of decolonial studies as an analytical agency to grasp how the oppressed, faced with the colonial logic of dehumanization, loses their identity and succumbs. Therefore, in order to answer the issue “How do the deaths of subalternized subjects uncover colonialities in the poetic work of Mariana Luz?”, as a corpus, 13 poems were selected from the following works Murmúrios (1960) and Folhas Soltas (2014), by the author from Maranhão, with the general aim of investigating how Luziana poetry can be seen as resistance, since it transforms the literature as an instrument of social analysis. And, in a specific manner, first, to evidence how Mariana Luz can be considered a decolonial subject by disconnecting from the MCP by means of the publication movement; second, analyze how the symbolic and physical deaths of subalternized subjects, in Luziana poetic work, uncover colonialities in the intersectionality of race, gender, class, age; and, finally, focusing on gender coloniality, analyze how the deaths of the female subject are portrayed in Luz’s poetry, in Brazilian patriarchal society, especially in Maranhão. In this regard, to carry out this basic classification research, the following steps are taken: (i) bibliographical research on decolonial studies, literature from Maranhão and the critical fortune of Mariana Luz's works through bibliographical survey and literature review; (ii) documentary research visiting the digital collection of the Biblioteca Pública Benedito Leite, in São Luís city; (iii) as to the approach, the research is qualitative, as it is not concerned with numerical representation but with deepening the understanding of the object, that is, the analysis of the corpus. The theoretical foundation was based on decolonial scholars such as Aníbal Quijano (2005, 2007, 2009), Walter Mignolo (2007, 2017 2021), Bernardino-Costa, Maldonado-Torres and Grosfoguel (2020), Lélia Gonzalez (2018, 2019, 2020), María Lugones (2014, 2020), Heleieth Saffioti (1987, 2002), amongst others; about Luziana work, Jucey Santana (2014), José Neres (2017), Gabriela Santana and Rafael Quevedo (2018), Cristiane Tolomei (2019) and Gabriela Santana (2021); and Alfredo Bosi (1987, 2002) and Antonio Candido (2009, 2011) regarding resistance literature and its social role. Given this, it was verified how Mariana Luz destabilized preconceptions about oppressed subjects, re-existing, beyond the colonizing perspective, both as a person and as a writer. Furthermore, it was observed how Luziana poetic work, through the theme of death, reveals the colonialities that hierarchize, dehumanize and kill colonial subjects.