“Faço tábula da fábula rasa”. Decolonial rewriting of Brazil in Paulo Leminski’s Catatau

Abstract

As a particular form of historiographic metafiction dealing with the Dutch colonization of Brazil, Paulo Leminski’s “novel-idea” Catatau (1975) seems less concerned with factual history than with the epistemic dimensions of colonial discourse about Brazil. On the reading proposed here, Leminski’s novel is understood as a decolonial “thought instrument” (V. DAS) based on a performative aesthetic. Catatau’s textual strategies transform the protagonist, a fictionalised Descartes, into an echo chamber in which colonial rationalisms are denied by the appropriation of certain pretexts and genres and a prolific language of difference, resulting in a “de-interpretation” of Brazil as a way of “de-thinking” coloniality.