Os Capitães da Areia como agentes da resistência ao projeto biopolítico de aniquilação dos outros

Abstract

The novel Captains of the Sands (1937), by Jorge Amado, presents the daily life of a group of abandoned minors in the city of Salvador. This thesis aims to present theoretical-critical arguments that explain how Amado’s literature and the “Captains of the Sands” gang can be considered agents of resistance to the biopolitical project of annihilation of others. Based on theoretical foundations in Adorno, Foucault, Mbembe, Ariès, Del Priore and others, we argue that the group of street children, who are considered misfortunes, social stigmas, and undesirable in society, become a resistance force against representatives of the bourgeoisie and government institutions of the State and the Press in order not to be extirpated by a biopolitical project of ongoing annihilation in Brazilian society from the 1930s onwards. Family, State, Press, and Church are the social institutions that form the regulatory base of a quadripartite set of correlations of forces and their representations generate the ideas and forces that are at the core of textual composition, and which continue to permeate the entire development of the novel.