Aspects of Indigenous Participation in Brazilian Literature

Abstract

The article both presents how, from the end of the 1980s onwards, native peoples have begun to occupy certain spaces of textual production and circulation that they had not previously occupied in the Brazilian cultural scene (for social, linguistic, and cultural reasons, but also political and juridical) and discusses how this process has provoked a vigorous movement of dilation of traditional textual and discursive borders in Western culture. Texts deriving from indigenous peoples in the sphere of academic discourse are, in general, bilingual, and are structured in ways that combine aspects of intellectual production with those of artistic creation. Moreover, they are also structured around a rather complex conception of the notion of authorship (considering that they are written by an author but represent the voice of their people). As examples, the article analyzes the case of Os cantos tradicionais Ye’kwana [Traditional Ye’kwana Chants], by the indigenous teacher and researcher Fernando Ye’kwana Gimenes, winner of the 2020/2021 edition of the Dirce Cortes Riedel Masters Dissertation Award by the Brazilian Association of Comparative Literature, as a typical example of the cultural phenomenon discussed. The traditional Ye’kwana chants present significant transgressions in relation to the traditional notions of narrative logic and the dominant forms of narration in the fields of literature and history. The awarding of this academic prize to an indigenous inhabitant of the forest, on the border between Brazil and Venezuela, by the largest association of comparative literature in Latin America, in addition to being an important act in political terms, demonstrates how urgent it is to rethink processes of global literary dissemination beyond the restricted frameworks configured by the logic of hegemonic cultures, which are based on closed divisions and hierarchies. With this, we intend to contribute to the process of including Amerindian texts in the repertoire of Comparative Literature and World Literature.