O fantástico como performance cultural

Abstract

Fantastic literature is recognized for thematizing in different ways the encounter of the human being with the inconceivable. After generations of writers in the genre, the fantastic effect of fear and/or radical restlessness has passed through exotic settings like those of H. P. Lovecraft and more mundane, everyday scenarios like those of Murilo Rubião, a Brazilian twentieth century writer from Minas Gerais. In these transformations, David Roas, a Catalan literary critic, realizes that the thematization of the fantastic reveals real socio-cultural phenomena, because the fantastic encounter depends on contextual sociocultural variables to happen, such as circulating knowledge, the power relations and, above all, the explanatory capability of subject or society. After all the radical restlessness coming from the encounter with the inexplicable will depend beforehand and fundamentally on the existence of something inexplicable. Thus, assuming that in social life, outside the literary book, there will always be the inexplicable, because it is pragmatically impossible for anyone, individual or group, to know everything, the fantastic is placed as a potential circumstance in various contexts: it is enough that a subject comes across something that, although directly affecting his/her life, is incomprehensible, challenges his/her logic, his/her explanatory ability, that is, make this subject deeply desire the unreality of this something. Therefore, to affirm this possible understanding of the fantastic as an extratextual, sociocultural phenomenon, this research seeks to understand it as a cultural performance. The path to achieve this purpose stems from three versions of the fictional universe created by the Brazilian storyteller, synthesizing them in the notion of absurd-fantastic, which will then be articulated to that of cultural performances. From this, it is hoped to suggest investigative courses on potential encounters between human beings and the inconceivable in different societies, revealing precious information in each context often hidden from an inattentive eye. With this proposal, it is hoped to broaden the field of intersectional studies between literature and performance, because it is still young, but very promising; and contribute to people who want to keep the bewilderment up to date, to bring about the necessary estrangement in front of the quirks that are made daily by the force of propaganda, coercion, ignorance, unfortunately. In this perspective, to realize the fantastic in living is to refuse to accept the inconceivable just because it is explainable, so theorizing about the fantastic as a cultural performance can make it useful as a discursive and conceptual tool – a utility that will be exemplified through a dialogue with the analysis that Luciene Dias and Ralyanara Freire make of Luana Barbosa dos Reis' lesbicide as an urban performance of horror –.