João Melo and the poetics of violence: a brief analysis of Autorretrato

Abstract

João Melo is recongnized by contemporary critics as a landmark in post­-independece Angolan poetry, but he is still little known in Brazil. Melo was born in 1955, in Luanda, Angola, and comes to the literary cannon of his time with a work that, apparently alienated from Realism, constitutes itself as a way to denounce social exclusion through a sophisticated aesthetic. The central idea of this article is to propose a more attentive focus, among the various themes raised by the poet, for the importance of violence as a topic of representation of Angolan daily life in its condition as a peripheral country. Critics such as Seligmann-Silva (1999) contribute to the reflection, especially in the understanding testimony and irony in Autorretrato (2007). In this dialogue, it also presents itself as an unavoidable work for the discussion, for the understanding of Melo’s poetry in its resistance character, Theodor Adorno’s Negative Dialectic (2018).