Rachel Esteves Lima (Federal University of Bahia (UFBA))

SPLAS

29th of May - 1PM

O'Rahilly Building, 1.24 Room

The lecture aims to present and discuss how literature has been reacting to political events in Brazil since 2013, especially the “Jornadas de Junho” (The June Unrest), the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the arrest of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. We will emphasise, among the books that take on politics with a capital P as their theme, the collective works that invest, in a risky and potential way, in the politicisation of aesthetics, leaving purism and differences aside in order to, in the heat of events, collect texts from several genres, discursive regimes, aesthetic projects and media as a form of intervention in contemporary Brazilian reality.

Rachel Esteves Lima is Professor of Brazilian Literature at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), with postdoctoral studies at the Paris XIII University (2011), a Ph.D. in Literary Studies / Comparative Literature (1997) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and an M. A. in Literary Studies / Brazilian Literature (1987) also at UFMG. She edited the books A Antropofagia na era da globalização (EDUFBA, 2016) and O espaço biográfico: perspectivas interdisciplinares (EDUFBA, 2016) and is author of several articles in specialized periodicals, in the field of literature. She is coordinator of the Study Group on Criticism and Contemporary Culture (UFBA) and a CNPq researcher. In her present-day postdoctoral studies at the University of Bologna, she is conducting a research project titled "The June 2013 enigma: repercussions of political demonstrations in Brazilian literature and cinema”.