Symbolic violence in "A mancha", by Brazilian author Luiz Ruffato

Abstract

This article aims to investigate the instances of violence to which the characters from “A mancha”, short story from novel Inferno provisório (2016) by Luiz Ruffato, are submitted. In the story, laundress Bibica is surprised by the tragic death of her youngest child, Marquinho, whom she raised by herself. Following the loss, the narrative introduces the inequal relationship between the woman and a merchant, an affair that resulted in the boy’s birth. Considering the presence of a disbalance between the characters in terms of gender and class, alongside the parental abandon chosen by the man, this work sought to obtain a comprehension of the instances of violence directed at the female character through a discursive and ideological analysis. The manner in which the discourses tie themselves to a sociospatial dynamic was also observed, considering the impediments in the social reality created within the narrative. In search of an ample understanding of such representations, the methodological approach is based on Speech genres (2016), by Mikhail Bakhtin, and the sociological propositions by Pierre Bourdieu in Masculine domination (2012) and Symbolic power (1989).