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Artigos

No. 3-4 (2001): Corpo e Identidades

Body, Invisibility and Division: Metaphors of Identity in Teolinda Gersão and Bernardo Carvalho

  • Helena Carvalhão Buescu
Submitted
September 25, 2015
Published
2005-12-15

Abstract

A Casa da Cabeça de Cavalo by Teolinda Gersão, and Teatro by Bernardo Carvalho are two fascinating projects in which the considerations on the body point towards the manifestation of a fragile and precarious identity. In both novels we see a mise-en-scène of oblique and never fixed body forms, and these alternative modes assumed by corporeality function as a sign of a deep anguish regarding the degree of existence that it might have as a manifestation of identity. Sexualized and sexual, political, individual, historical, and national bodies intermingle in these two works, ending up leading to the consideration of the way how, in both of them, the questioning of the identity manifestation can also never be dissociated from another questioning, which is valid both for the community and, particularly, for the national identities they belong to, namely, Portugal and Brazil.