Isaías Caminha e Gonzaga de Sá: personagens de Lima Barreto à luz do materialismo lacaniano

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the characters Isaías Caminha and Gonzaga de Sá, both protagonists of the novels Recordações do Escrivão Isaías Caminha (1998) and Vida e morte de M. J. Gonzaga de Sá (1997), by the pre-modernist writer Lima Barreto, through the lens of Lacanian Materialism proposed by the Slovenian philosopher and critic Slavoj Žižek. Initially, we present the author and a brief view of the literary movement to which he is linked. As it is a relatively new trend in Brazil, we emphasize that Lacanian Materialism, previously linked to political philosophy, gradually advances and reaches the area of ​​cultural studies, through the proposal of reading literary texts from the application of Lacan's concepts proposed by Žižek. This critic's proposal is to intervene in political discourse because he believes that it can affect people's ideas and help social changing. In this perspective, the objective of this article is to apply the concepts of  the real, the symbolic and the imaginary, in a brief analysis of the two characters (Isaías Caminha and Gonzaga de Sá) to explain how these concepts provide a directive on the possible relationship between what Žižek says about current issues and what can be applied to the reality of the novels under study. Our research attests to the relevance of Lima Barreto's works, since his characters represent the human being as a social organism conditioned to historical and literary conceptions, which allows our analysis in the light of a contemporary theory.