Poder, resistência e subjetividade: uma análise discursiva da obra “Não há silêncio que não termine”, de Ingrid Betancourt, e “É isto um homem?” de Primo Levi

Abstract

The discursive elaboration in the form of literature on political war can mirror the way in which the subject is constituted in the midst of a historical plot. There are two autobiographical books that portray experiences of political and social conflicts through which it is possible to perceive subjection in the face of the exercise of power with consequences on subjectivity: on one hand, Ingrid Betancourt, former presidential candidate of Colombia in 2002, portrays her experience of war and armed conflict between guerrillas, paramilitaries and military forces when being kidnapped by a group called FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In her book There is no silence that does not end: my years of captivity in the Colombian jungle, the author exposes a wealth of possible modes of subjectivation, in particular those generated from subjection to power in conditions of kidnapping. On the other hand, the author Primo Levi, a Jewish-Italian citizen, tells his experience in the concentration camps when he was taken to Auschwitz, exposing the consequences of torture and the degradation of humanity. The present work then aimed to present a reflection, in the line of Discourse Analysis, on the subject-author position of Betancourt and Levi, as subjects submitted to the exercise of sovereign and disciplinary power, which for the philosopher Michel Foucault, represent some of the forms of power. This is a qualitative and exploratory research in relation to the proposed objectives. The perspective from which this work should be observed is socio-historical. The two research questions that there were intended to be reached were: How was the operation and how was the discourse of power constituted exercised by the FARC at the time of Ingrid Betancourt's kidnapping, and by the Nazis during Levi's imprisonment in the concentration camps? What were the meanings and meaning effects produced around Betancourt's and Levi's discourse of resistance? Regarding the choice of corpus, statements were selected from the two works that contained textual marks of power, resistance and changes in subjectivity, which, in one way or another, forge the mode of constitution of the subject when in conditions of deprivation of freedom and torture. The methodological procedures, according to the nature of AD, were guided to highlight the processes of meaning of these statements, in an attempt to understand the effects of meaning produced in them. To achieve the objectives of the proposed reflection, a historical contextualization of the FARC in Colombia and Nazism in Europe was made, followed by a review of Foucauldian concepts that focus on the axis of power, resistance and subjectivity. The articulation of these three concepts developed by Foucault were the foundation of the analysis.