Entre vozes e fragmentos: a construção da memória por meio da “outridade” em Relato de um Certo Oriente, de Milton Hatoum

Abstract

This monograph aims to study the construction of memory through the role of “otherness” in Milton Hatoum’s Relato de um certo oriente (1989). Excerpts and their meanings were analyzed with a focus on the concepts of Diana Klinger’s (2006) thesis on the role of the “ethnographic” narrator. An attempt was made to turn Klinger’s procedure into an angle of observation and study of the narrator of the novel in question, as she seeks to reconnect with (or even reconstruct) her previous “self” through access to memories of the past and the memory brought by a group of characters also narrators: hence the “otherness”. Furthermore, to support the research, we went to the sources with which Diana Klinger dialogued in her thesis, namely, Walter Benjamin (1987) and Silviano Santiago (2002), in order to explore problematizations in relation to the narrator and relate them to the role of the memory constituted in the work. The conclusion reached was that Milton Hatoum’s narrative allows a small adaptation in the ethnographic method suggested by Klinger.