LETTERS AGAINST CASSANDRA RIOS: DIALOGUES BETWEEN THE HISTORY OF THE PRESENT TIME, CENSORSHIP AND GENRE
Hevila Maria Sousa Santos
Master's
student in Atlantic History and Social Formations at the Postgraduate Program
in History at the Federal University of Maranhão, PPGHIS/UFMA. Email:
hevilamaria.sousa@gmail.com. Advisor: Prof. Dr. John Baptist Bitencourt.
Abstract: Studying the theoretical relationships between History and Literature
gives us the opportunity to move History in other scopes, both for the
theoretical debate that is inserted, and for the opportunity to revisit the past
from literary sources. The São Paulo writer Cassandra Rios (1932-2002), known
for writing lesbian and erotic novels, was censored during the entire
civil-military regime that was in force in Brazil between 1964 and 1985.
According to the regime, her works were inadequate for the Brazilian
population, as it offended the moral values and good customs that were sought
to preserve the Brazilian people. This discourse was not created by the
military in power, nor was it restricted to the Brazilian reality reserved for
that period. On the contrary, the censorship of sexualities considered deviant
gained strength since decades before the coup of 64. And the discourse of
preserving the good customs of the population has its roots in the heart of the
Cold War, which favored, through anti-communist propaganda, the birth of the
relationship between homosexuality, promiscuity and danger to the nation. Based
on the readings of Michel de Certeau and Carlos Fico, we brought two letters
written by civilians and addressed to the Minister of Justice Armando Falcão,
against Cassandra Rios, imbued with these values and discourses that must be
read from the point of view of time, but also of the permanence of discourses
that are still reproduced.
Keywords: Cassandra Rios. Censorship. Genre. History. Literature.
Reviewed by Current Scientific Journal
on
outubro 09, 2022
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