Poetics of Disenchantment in Stella Manhattan by Silviano Santiago and Bandoleiros by João Gilberto Noll

Abstract

Since the Brazilian democratic opening of 1980 arises a series of works that constitute a change concerning the preceding realistic narrative. I read these narratives from the category of “poetics of disenchantment” as they show a rejection of modernization. In this work, I analyze the novels Stella Manhattan (1985) by Silviano Santiago and Bandoleiros (1985) by João Gilberto Noll, and propose a critical reading that focuses on representations of the body and mobile identities as manifestations of the poetics of disenchantment. e violence and the paranoid logic with which the characters operate in Santiago’s novel (which sets in times of the Brazilian military dictatorship) produce a rhizomatic effect on the identities that multiply and disintegrate. Meanwhile, in Noll’s novel, the violence on the bodies is portrayed with the dynamics of the show, banalizing them, and the anecdotes are rewritten again and again, exposing the artifice.