Memória e identidade em Nove noites, de Bernardo Carvalho

Abstract

The following Masters dissertation is a study of memories and cultural identities from the novel Nove Noites (2002) (NN), written by Bernardo Carvalho. The journalistnarrator of the novel tells a history about something he did not experienced: the suicide of the American anthropologist Buell Halvor Quain. Hence, the journalist searches for memories such as letters, photographs and reports of people lived with Quain in order to solve the referred suicide. In another narrative instance, we read a will let by a character that met Buell Quain in Brazil: Manoel Perna. My research hypothesis was about the entanglement between the narrators from diferents sociohistorical times should make clear diferents cultural identities and, consenquently, identifications to one cultural identity and not with another. Concerning to my research, I have demarcated as goals: i. Demostrating the memories and identity functioning in NN; ii. Contrasting and analysing the narratives instances; iii. Verifying cultural questions for the NN’s narrative structure. To explain these memories, I have based this study mainly in the Discurso da narrativa, from Gérard Genette (1995). The memories of the novel brings inside them other voices responsible for fragmenting the chronological narrative order and allow me to read the book by relating it to identity questions. Therefore, I have referred the narrator’s voices to their sociocultural point of view. Due to that, cultural studies were the basis of this Masters dissertation: A identidade cultural na pós-modernidade, Da diáspora (2003) and Who needs identity (2003), all written by Stuart Hall. These references were the main theoretical basis used in order to understand identities through narrative structures. This theoretical and analytical process support me to demostrate the identification as a nonexplicit game inside the memory narration from NN.