THE DECOLONIZATION OF CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH IN THE NOVEL O KARAÍBA, BY DANIEL MUNDURUKU

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the problematization of the multiple processes of colonization operated by the novel O Karaíba: uma história do pré-Brasil, by Daniel Munduruku. To this end, it relates the discussions on children's and young adult literature developed by Zilberman (2005) and Ceccantini (2004) to the debates on the functions of the intellectual and literature proposed by Mata (2014), Patrocínio (2010), and Sussekind (1984). Methodologically, the article adopts an interdisciplinary and comparative approach that brings together reflections from literary theory and criticism, anthropology, and cultural studies, allowing for the problematization of concepts such as childhood in its relationship with the dimensions of identity and alterity. The results of the analysis indicate that, in confluence with the demands of the emerging bourgeois family, childhood was constituted as a modern invention, and that the advent of children's and young adult fiction itself would have contributed to the production of this conception of childhood as a distinct age group. These findings thus support the argument that the book under analysis proposes a double questioning of colonial processes, challenging national narratives of colonization and the consequent annihilation of indigenous ethnicities and cultures, while simultaneously displacing the modern conception of childhood. In its conclusions, the article seeks to demonstrate how O Karaíba calls into question children's and young adult literature as a social institution, problematizing the positions occupied by childhood and indigenous peoples. This therefore implies a movement of counter-colonization, invading the literate territory of white adults in order to displace and reconfigure it.