Memória do desaparecimento: a ditadura no romance "K. Relato de uma busca", de Bernardo Kucinski

Abstract

As the present study points out, the contemporary literary debate about the military dictatorship (1964-1985) in Brazil focuses on the phenomenon of forced disappearances. The novel K. Relato de uma busca (2011) by Bernardo Kucinski makes it clear that forced disappearances represent a crime committed by the state that cannot be measured in quantitative terms. Quite on the contrary, the book shows that they are a strategy of extermination that destroys not only the victims but also the persons related to them and that extends from the past up to the present. The novel stages human destruction without overcoming it by reconstructing what happened. Memory here is just the conscience of loss and of uncertainty. In this sense, disappearance goes on – as does destruction.