Memory and responsiveness in Jesusalém, by Mia Couto

Abstract

The romance Jesusalém, published in 2009 by Mia Couto, brings up the story of five Mozambicans - including Silvestre Vitalício and his two children - who will take refuge in an isolated land. The undertaking takes place out of the patriarch's desire to rebuild his present by abdicating the past. Jesusalém, the name given to the place, is now inhabited by interdictions made by the father to his children, in relation to the construction of this past. In the new home, there will be no space for expressions of memory, always rejected by the patriarch who imposes silences in its place. In view of the above, we propose to carry out in this analysis a dialogical reading about the (suppression of) the memory in the narrative plot, realizing the responsive attitudes generated, especially in the face of the interdiction of the report. We also need to understand how this silencing that encompasses the family microcosm can be extended to that experienced by the Mozambican homeland. Despite the father's effort, the complete forgetting of these memories cannot be fully realized (GAGNEBIN, 2009) and in the face of his fanciful and fallacious speech, the children will constantly perform responsive attitudes (BAKHTIN, 1986) related to both Silvestre's speech, as to the speech of the other two adults to whom they have access, seeking to recover this lost past.