Contando tricksters: agentes de subversão/transgressão de relações de poder em Erdrich, Morrison e Hopkinson

Abstract

In times of increasing dissemination of hatred and rise of state authoritarianism and institutionalized oppression, looking towards the power of the people, that endogenous power, constitutes in the largest agency that every citizen should practice in society. Provided that Literature promotes discussions, symbols and representations of this transformational rhizome, although corroded by the external structure, the use of the trickster figure urges. Tricksters are understood, and we endorse the place of the feminine, as multi(trans)faceted personalities and agents of strategies both discursive, and representational to face social injustices. In addition to this is the ability of tricksters to be agents of subversion and / or transgression within the scope of the racist, sexist, machist, lgbtqiphobic, and classicist hegemonic order. This research intends to investigate the trickster category and its possibilities of power relations agency, involving gender, race and class in three novels of a Native American, an African American, and a Jamaican Canadian, namely: The Antelope Wife, by Louise Erdrich (1998); Sula, by Toni Morrison (1973); Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson (2000). Epistemes are centered, fundamentally, on theoretical-philosophical basis that discusses the place of Native Americans and Afro-diasporic peoples in the Americas, as a guarantee of the place of speech. For our theoretical and critical discussions in Tricksters, we selected: Hyde (1998), Hynes; Doty (2003); Cunha (2005); Smith (1997); Gates Jr. (1988); Vizenor (1990). For issues on studies in Native American literature, intersectional feminism, transculturality, de-colonialism: Schneider (2001); hooks (1984); Davis (2016); Ribeiro (2017); Pratt (1999); Walter (2009); Costa (2015). We perceive different forms of tricksters in the novels mentioned that deal with power relations, sometimes subverting them, sometimes transgressing them. In The Antelope Wife storytelling, evidenced in the central narrator's discourse and in the focalization on various characters, brings a narrative multivocalization that subverts the linear order of narrativity and transgresses the hegemonic discourses of foundation narratives. In Sula, trickster Sula’s assertiveness uses Womanism sass, as verbal language and performativity, which subverts the racist and elitist patriarchy and transgresses "sacred" institutions like marriage. In Midnight Robber, the transcultural discursiveness in the diaspora confers the trickster character of Tan-Tan that performs the cultural pluriversality, subverting oppressions and transgressing borders, when dressed up of a mythical and folkloric Caribbean figure, besides other tropes of culture. Thus, in different and multi-aesthetic forms, the tricksters of the novels in analysis converge with respect to establish different places of speech and compose a collection produced by anti-hegemonic peoples that are circumscribed in the Native America, and in the Afro-diasporic America.