NARRAR O ALZHEIMER BRASILEIRO SOBRE A DITADURA MILITAR: LITERATURA E MEMÓRIA NA OBRA DE B.KUCINSKI

The novel K., by Bernardo Kucinski, released in 2011, was one of the most read, translated, and studied literary text on the theme of the representation of the Brazilian military dictatorship in the last decade. It was also used as an annexed document in the final report of the National Truth Commission. Based on it, the author hypothesizes that Brazil suffers from a “Alzheimer’s disease” because it has not yet come to terms with its recent authoritarian past and persists in excluding memories of crimes committed by State terrorism in the sphere of public. Starting from the autobiographical story of the forced disappearance of his sister, Ana Rosa Kucinski Silva on April 22, 1974, the author fictionalizes a reflection on the two decades of State repression and terrorism and, over the last ten years, develops a galaxy of narratives to intervene in the representation or absence of the theme in public debates. In this context, I tried to extend this metaphor of Alzheimer's disease to analyse the memories that Bernardo Kucinski built about the civil-military dictatorship in his literature. I pointed out the current situation regarding the dispute of collective memories and a huge exclusion that hangs over public memory. The regime's secret service archives have not yet been made available to society. We still do not have access to information about the crimes carried out by the State at the time. In the articulation for re-democratization, the military managed to maintain the prerogative that they would not be judged for the crimes committed. Despite the insistent struggle of survivors and relatives of the politically disappeared, amnesty/amnesia continues to operate in contemporary. Trying to situate where Kucinski’s works fit in the Brazilian literary production on the subject, I point out an important demarcation: his works present a galaxy of voices and narratives about the civil-military dictatorship, but in his fiction, there is a protagonism of the relatives of the political disappeared, it is largely from this place that its narrators and protagonists speak. Looking at the decade-long literary project, from the six novels, three, K., Os visitantes and Júlia: no scampos conflagrados do Senhor are centered on the history and memory of repression, Nova ordem focuses its narrative on a radical authoritarianism implemented in Brazil from of the year 2019. The other two novels, Alice: não mais que repente and Pretérito imperfeito also bring important legacies of the dictatorial period, but in my view they allow a reading of two other pathological symptoms that have been exacerbating problems of the nation also discussed in the literature of B. Kucinski: the structural violence of patriarchate and racism in our society. In the last chapter, I focused my analysis on B. Kucinski's representations of resistance and opposition to authoritarianism. Starting from Fernando Reati's reflection on the beauty and utopia of the emblem "never again", I point to the important discussion that Kucinski's literary project claims for the treatment of memories about the crimes of the Brazilian military dictatorship in the public sphere, as an essential understanding from the past to the possibility of projecting a less excluding future. On the other hand, as stated by Heloísa Starling, the works of Bernardo Kucinski are not just a representation of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship but are narratives for us to learn to be together, to fight against tyranny. I analyse the various alliances created for this struggle, especially the innovative role given to the association of the families of the disappeared and the representation of the shared world of hopes and struggle for organized militancy in dictatorial times. I conclude by understanding the decade of literature produced by the intellectual Bernardo Kucinski as an intervention in the public sphere, showing how essential it is to break with this excluding memory. We can no longer maintain this amnesia/amnesty, at the cost of this “national Alzheimer's disease” leading us to fatal apathy, because as the German psychiatrist showed over a hundred years ago, without memory there is no lucidity. The new topia – utopia – built by Kucinski’s characters and the alliance formed by them, does not push us towards a passive apocalyptic scenario, but opens wide our pathological heritage in insisting on the exclusion of the crimes of this recent past in the discussions about the country and the injustice about it, which the democratic return was articulated. Not even in the Nova ordem everything was put under the control of the dictators, they never managed to capture dreams and, following the advice of Ailton Krenak, I think B. Kucinski also perceives in dreams this breathing practice, this parachute to postpone the end of the world, or deadly apathy.