A língua dos anjos caídos não se ouve no Brasil: uma leitura decolonial do conto “O moleque”, de Lima Barreto

Abstract

This paper argues that the short story "O moleque", by Lima Barreto (1881 – 1922), represents the Brazilian national project of criminalizing poor citizens and, above all, peripheral black people. The reading focuses on the strategies of the protagonist Zeca to elaborate his own language, as well as the symbolism of the devil costume used as a decolonial reaction. This work attempts to deconstruct readings that limit the black subject to a position of inert victim. In this sense, the theoretical background intends to cause an “epistemic disobedience” (MIGNOLO, 2008). Hence, it is based on authors of the post-colonial and decolonial tradition, such as Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak, Angela Davis, Achille Mbembe, and Grada Kilomba, as well as Lélia Gonzalez, Silvio Almeida, and Sueli Carneiro in the Brazilian context.