Published 2016-09-20
Copyright (c) 2016 Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Abstract: Focusing on centennial commemorations of Machado de Assis as a series of paradoxical events linked to both truth and value, this paper discusses Machado de Assis’ reduction of life to literature through a movement that also allows him to create two radically heterogeneous orders: reality and culture. In other words, Machado (as well as Borges) paradoxically posit literature as a machine that reduces both the state and literature, in a simultaneous and aporetical manner. Consequently, the enigma of the state (the aporia of reading) generates other enigmas that point out the verbal decomposition of truth, the perpetual ambivalence of texts, and even the secret of literature as a social institution.