Female empowerment and the visibility of a people in Ponciá Vicêncio de Conceição Evaristo

Abstract

This research presents as its central theme the study of the work Ponciá Vicêncio (2013) by Conceição Evaristo in the light of Lacanian Materialism. And, following this line of investigative thought, it aims to understand how the representation of the female character - a black woman - stars in a story of struggle and pain of black people marked by slavery. To this purpose, it is necessary to discuss Conceição Evaristo's literature, its importance for contemporary literature and how her work can be thought of from Žižek's materialism, since Evaristo writes from her place as a poor black woman, specifically about black women in Brazil, who were, for many years, represented in the light of male writing as a symbol of mother, submissive wife or through sensualization or sexualization. This research took qualitative and inductive research as its study path and intends to observe the relationship between the protagonist's memory streams and the African diaspora that accompany her losses, dreams and disagreements, elements that allude to the functioning of the triad: Symbolic, Imaginary and Real, responsible for the constitution of Ponciá as a social being. The objective is to find out, mainly, how the structure of the narrative helps in the construction of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and points to the presence of the Real in Ponciá's story. Among other theoretical references, we will use the studies of Candido (2011), Bonnici (2011), Silva (2009), (2018), Oliveira (2022), Žižek & Glyn (2006), Žižek (1992), (2010) and (2011). 

Keywords: Conceição Evaristo; Lacanian Materialism; Female Character.