“Uma gente que fica agarrada na terra”: Território quilombola e corpos subalternizados em A Claridade da Gente de Paulo Rodrigues

Abstract

This research proposes a critical reading of the work A Claridade da Gente (2023), by the Maranhão poet Paulo Rodrigues, considering decolonial theory, understanding literature as a space of symbolic, political, and epistemological dispute. The study arises from an intellectual, ethical, and political gesture traversed by a situated experience, marked by living in the countryside and direct contact with rural work, which guides an implicated look at the dynamics of exploitation, silencing, and resistance/re-existence that structure life in the Brazilian rural area, moving away from neutral or detached perspectives. It begins with the question of how Paulo Rodrigues' counter-hegemonic poetry problematizes the processes of territoriality, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization of quilombola communities, as well as the power dynamics that historically exploit subalternized subjects. To answer this question, the general objective is to understand how the poet articulates literature and society in the face of the persistence of colonial structures in the reality of quilombos (maroon communities). Specific objectives include: analyzing the representation of quilombo territoriality and the effects of deterritorialization, with emphasis on the Quilombo Onça community in Santa Inês, Maranhão; discussing the precariousness of work in the countryside and the exploitation of the bodies of rural workers; and examining women's and children's labor in Paulo Rodrigues' poetry, highlighting the mechanisms of invisibility and violence that sustain the logic of the capitalist system. Methodologically, this is qualitative research, of an interpretative, exploratory, and descriptive nature, which articulates textual analysis of the work, bibliographic investigation, field research in the Quilombo Onça community, and a semi-structured interview with the author. The theoretical framework engages with Brazilian literary criticism, especially Antonio Candido (2006) and Alfredo Bosi (2002); with the decolonial theory of Aníbal Quijano (2005) and Walter Mignolo (2022); With the support of Quilombola and anti-racist intellectuals such as Abdias Nascimento (1980), Lélia Gonzalez (2020), and Antonio Bispo dos Santos (2015); with the studies on territory by Rogério Haesbaert (2004); and with the feminist contributions of Heleieth Saffioti (1987; 2004) and Rita Laura Segato (2016), fundamental to understanding the exploitation of the female body, the sexual division of labor, and the persistence of patriarchy in agrarian spaces. It concludes that A Claridade da Gente constructs a poeticpolitical project in which Quilombola territory is reaffirmed as a space of belonging, memory, and struggle, while simultaneously denouncing the precariousness of rural work, the exploitation of women's labour, and the naturalization of child labour, affirming literature as a critical practice committed to social justice, memory, and the right to permanence.