Rudolfo: fiction as a right

Abstract

We propose a reading of Rudolfo, by Olga Gonçalves, the first Portuguese novel to deal with the issue of retornados, seeking to develop two converging points of reflection. On the one hand, it is worth analyzing the tensions caused by the writing of memory, seeking to understand to what extent its representation in the novel, by investing in subjective construction, is capable of promoting new designs of identities that assert themselves from the margins — sometimes that of Rudolfo the character, sometimes that of the narrator —, from the encounter with the other, however problematic this encounter may be. On the other hand, with the help of the thoughts of theorists such as Paul Ricoeur and Luiz Costa Lima, we believe it is essential to reflect on the fictional status of the text, or rather, on the tensions that exist between the literary discourse and the historical background that supports it. Given this context, the practice of a decidedly fictional writing seems to impose itself as an instrument to propose other ways of conceiving the relationship between the verbal and its referents and, above all, to legitimize spaces of enunciation from which the protagonists combat the silencing of their social roles.