Escrever-se como baratas: autobiografias/autozoografias em Adília Lopes e Eliane Brum

By analyzing the poem “Autobiografia sumária”, published in 1987 by Portuguese poet Adília Lopes, in A pão e água de colônia and “Autobiografia de uma barata”, included in Meus desacontecimentos: A história da minha vida com as palavras (2014), by Brazilian writer and journalist Eliane Brum, the article investigates the implications of the cockroach figure in both autobiographical texts. Following the ideas of “zoo-ontology”, by Adriana Cavarero, and “bio- egalitarianism”, by Rosi Braidotti, the article aims to show how the presence of the radical alterity of the insect challenges the distance between bios and zoé. Starting from the theoretical positions of Braidotti, Cavarero, and Julia Kristeva on the cultural meanings linked to insects, to the space of abjection, the feminine and the maternal, and investigating the metamorphosis of subjectivities operated by the two authors when disorganizing the form of the autobiography, the article proposes to reinterpret these excerpts as modes of writing that open passages between forms of living – human and more-than-human – enabling a rapprochement between the two, and moving towards an “autozoographical” writing.