A Radical Cut in the Fabric of History: the Free Use of the Past in the Biographical Narrative of Paulo Leminski

Abstract

The aim of this text is to analyze the uses of the past in the biographical literature of Paulo Leminski and the idea of historicity that these uses presuppose. Its object is the biography of poet Cruz e Sousa written by Leminski. In the book, Leminski seeks to create a literary narrative that uses fragments of the past to problematize the contemporary situation, thereby establishing links with multiple temporalities and questioning the subject-object relations as they appear in modern disciplinary knowledge and contemporary politics. This thought-experiment can help us expand the limits of our historiographical imagination.