A Bildungsroman for the 21st Century: Media and Subjectivity in Daniel Galera’s "Mãos de Cavalo"

• In Event: Crecer en América Latina: relatos de formación en la inequidad, la violencia y la impunidad.

Abstract

This presentation deals with Daniel Galera’s contribution to contemporary Brazilian literature, and to the specific genre of the Bildungsroman, with his 2006 novel Mãos de Cavalo. My main objective is to show how Galera discusses contemporary media as a creator of fictions that have redefined our concepts of subjectivity and reality, especially for younger generations. By using different theoretical concepts related to the Bildungsroman (as it appears in the works of Mikhail Bakhtin and Franco Moretti), I show how the representation of the individual problems of Hermano, the novel’s protagonist, is a reflection of broader issues related to Brazil’s history and inequality and, simultaneously, to the new subjectivities that emerge as a result of the extensive influence of contemporary media on our everyday life. One of the novel’s main topics is the protagonist’s problematic relationship to his own masculinity, which leads to a number of masochistic tendencies throughout the novel. In order to analyze the main character’s problematic relationship to his own masculinity and its resulting masochistic behaviors, I use Sigmund Freud’s and Byun-Chul Han’s discussions on masochism and self-harm, and their relationship to fantasy, imagination, and the different types of media that appear in the novel such as film, television, videogames, and comic books.

Author

• Norman A Valencia, Claremont McKenna College