Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Sonia Roncador

Source: Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 39, No. 1 (Summer, 2002), pp. 140-141
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3513846
Accessed: 23/11/2010 00:57

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140 Luso-BrazilianReview, 39/1

management of museums, and in the "export culture"of world expositions. Williams'

book, rich with detailed data and theoretically suggestive, demands close and careful
reading. The text is enhanced with black-and-whiteand color photographsof art work
and architecture,tables and charts, and a biographicalappendix of some of the various
culturaland political figures discussed. Though dealing mainly in the elite culture of fine
arts and architecturewhich was the main interest of the state at the time, there are
references to popularculture, such as samba,which during the second Vargas' regime in
the 1950s played a central role in national identity - a theme one hopes Williams may
embracein futurework.
The most exciting aspect of Culture Wars in Brazil: The First Vargas Regime,
1930-1945, is the frameworkit offers for understandingcontemporarystruggles over the
representation and management of Brazilian culture. In a globalized world where
"culture"is increasingly exported, who currentlyclaims rights to brasilidade? Who are
the contemporarywarriors in these "culturalwars"? With the current exhibit at New
York's Guggenheim Museum, "Brazil:Body and Soul," a retrospectiveof Brazilian arts
from the Baroqueto the Modem, this question could not be more timely. From examples
of Baroque catholic artwork to contemporaryreligious art of candomble, from 17th
century "anthropologicalportraits"of the indigenous by colonizers to the interactive
artworkof Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica of the 1960s, the exhibit bombardsthe viewer
with a kaleidoscope of conflicting images. For anyone dealing with the variety that is
brasilidade, Williams' book provides historicalperspective,a useful theoreticallanguage
and a critical lens.

KatyaWesolowski
TeachersCollege, ColumbiaUniversity

Fitz, Earl. Sexuality and Being in the Poststructuralist Universe of Clarice Lispector.
The Differance of Desire. Austin: U of Texas P, 2001. xiii + 246 pp.

Quando para muitos a critica parecia relativamente saturada de explica,coes

"definitivas"sobre a arte de Clarice Lispector,quando novas e novos escritorespareciam
ocupar o lugar nos estudos literariosdesta que talvez seja hoje a escritorabrasileiramais
consagrada dentro e fora do Brasil, surge o livro Sexuality and Being in the
Poststructuralist Universe of Clarice Lispector. The Diffirance of Desire, de Earl Fitz.
Autor de varios outros ensaios importantes sobre Lispector (alem de ser um dos
tradutorespara o ingles de Agua viva [The Stream of Life]), Fitz e talvez o critico que
melhor tenha examinado as rela6ces entre os procedimentos narrativosdesenvolvidos
pela autora durante sua carreira literaria (1944-77) e os principais pressupostos, ou
aqueles consensuais, que norteiam o pensamentop6s-estruturalista-por exemplo, "that
we can never express or know anything perfectly"(122) posto que a linguagem, lugar
onde o ser se da a conhecer e, num sentido, a existir, nao passa de um "constantly
changing and relentlessly ambiguoussystem of self-referentialtropes"(122).
Livro organizadoem seis capitulos, alem de uma introdu9aoe conclusao, ve-se aqui
"crescer" (para usar uma metafora cara a autora do conto "Amor")e se esclarecer o
argumento central de sua tese: sob a aparencia de uma escrita hermetica, as vezes
severamente acusada de um solipsismo irremediavel-"the endless ruminations of
agonized and acutely self-aware consciousnesses" (123)-, a literaturade Lispector
reflete avant la lettre tais pressupostos p6s-estruturalistas,cujas implica6ces 6ticas e
BooksReviewed 141

politicas nao foram percebidaspor muitos estudiosos de sua arte. Dessa maneira,afirma
Fitz, sua literaturaencena, ao mesmo tempo que nos imp6e, certasquest6es:

Given what, after Saussure, we know about language (its arbitraryand differential
relationshipto both materialand nominal reality and the relativityof meaning), how
should we live our lives? How should we relateto ourselves and to other people? On
what basis or justification do we make our decisions? (112)

Alem disso, dado que o pensamentop6s-estruturalistaassume na obrade Lispectora

forma de um "dilema"profundamentehumano-"our deep human need to order things,
to go in quest of a state of perfect communication(Logos, or Lispector's 'state of grace')
even as we fail to attain it" (13)-, a autorarevela o que muitos te6ricos negligenciam:
"[the] human face of [...] poststructuralism"(88).
Que nao se enganem os leitores de Lispector: por tras da "orgia"ou "festa" das
palavras(Lispector)que caracterizavarios de seus textos, por tras dos requintesliterarios
de que se revestem esses textos, emerge a figura (frustrada)de um narradorque ap6s a
aventurada escrita volta de "maos vazias," ou com o "quase-quase"(Lispector) de uma
est6ria, de uma verdade,enfim, de uma revelacao.Como argumentaFitz, seus

greatest works [. . .] poignantly play out this most human of dramas, that of our
being fated to seek perfect understandingand knowledge by means of a mechanism
(language) that is inherentlyflawed, that cannot do what we want it to do, but from
which we cannot escape and without which we would not be what we are. (49)

Um narrador"humilde"(Lispector), portanto,sem autoridade,ou, melhor dito, por

ele mesmo desautorizado,inaugurano Brasil de longa tradicaorealista uma literaturada
"inexpressao"(Lispector). Dai, segundo Fitz, a presenca constante em seus escritos de
certos recursos ou estrategias narrativasque geram a ambigiiidadee que reforcam no
nivel da forma a consciencia tragicada linguagem-esse mal necessario-como sistema
de significacao instavel e fluido: por exemplo, a criacao de personagenssem identidade
fixa, ou quase sempre em vias de constituiruma (de acordo com o critico, o pensamento
p6s-estruturalista,aliado ao impulso sexual das personagens narradas,pode leva-las a
transgrediremcertos modelos identitarios,sobretudoos relacionadosao genero).
Neste livro, Fitz combina magistralmenteseu interesse pela forma literaria e o
desejo de investigar os temas recorrentesem Lispector,aproximaprojetos aparentemente
irreconciliaveis como examinar ao mesmo tempo a "densidadepsicofilos6fica" (Fabio
Lucas) e a dimensao sociopolitica da obra dessa autora.Mas o critico vai alem, e ressalta
o papel crucial que a androginia e o homoerotismo exercem nos textos tardios de
Lispector, enriquecendo assim o campo de queer studies de literaturabrasileira. Sem
pretensoes a ser a palavradefinitiva sobre tal obra, este livro e, no entanto, um convite
irrecusavela um novo percursopelo "universode Clarice Lispector."

Sonia Roncador
Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign