From “third-person knowledge” to self-writing

the representation of the black men in Bom Crioulo (1895) and Memories of the scrivener Isaías Caminha (1909)

Abstract

During Brazilian Realism-Naturalism, at the turn of the 19^th to the 20^th century, black people enter the fiction narratives as relevant prominent characters, as is the case in Bom Crioulo (1895), by Adolfo Caminha, and Memories of the scrivener Isaías Caminha (1909), by Lima Barreto. About the protagonist, a social place in the margins can be highlighted, strained by the racial context, which is common to both. From this perspective, this paper aims to observe the representation of these characters, in a line of reasoning that outlines the elements of the composition of these fictional beings. Thus, there is the analysis of the structure that shapes Amaro and Isaías Caminha, the first character, a black sailor man invented by the white author Adolfo Caminha, and the second one, a scrivener, also black, created by the black author Lima Barreto. According to this, this analysis, the racial place of enunciation of the authors towards their creations is discussed, which leads us to reflect on the place of representation to which the characters are relegated, between object and subject (PROENÇA FILHO, 2004), meanwhile, a certain distance or a certain approximation is perceived when it comes to the existence and the (re)knowledge narrated in third person or first person of a black man (FANON, 2008).