Crescendo entre nós: ensaio sobre a identidade nacional da criança testemunha de guerra civil

Abstract

This thesis aims to answer what happens to national identity in a civil war. As an essay in comparative literature, this question appears related to four contemporary novels: How the soldier repairs the gramophone, by the Bosnian Saša Stanišić; My father's Rifle, by the Iraqi Kurdish Hiner Saleem; A long way gone, by the Sierra Leonean Ishmael Beah; and Half of a yellow sun, by the Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. These books tell stories about civil wars that happened in their authors’ countries in the 20th century. Also, they all have children as the narrator or the protagonist, the reason why in this thesis children will be the main subject of analysis. These four boys will guide our thoughts on what happens to bodies, speeches, and affects involved with the manifestation of nationalism on the eve of a civil war or in an ongoing conflict. All the ideas presented here are based on two assumptions. The first one is that the destabilization of hegemonic nationalism is a necessary condition to civil war. The second one is that, since modernity, children are seen as beings who need more than body growth to be considered adults. Adulthood requires a plethora of social learning, and nationalist ideology is among them. Because of that, the bodies and minds of the four juvenile characters can be seen as potential targets for nationalist pedagogy and its channels, such as school, art, family, and neighborhood. Regarding their bodies, we can infer that the relation between neighborhood and family constitute forms a sort of second oedipal situation, which will transform the neighborhood in the first and paradigmatic embodiment of the national community, up to the point that a civil war can only be started at the expense of the general rejection of the ethics of neighbourliness. Regarding nationalist discourses, we aim to demonstrate that hegemonic nationalism can always be replaced by another version of the same ideology, and this substitute is commonly willing to provoke war. Furthermore, on the topic of nationalist speech, we discovered that, as the enemy becomes synonymous with the foreigner within nationalist ideology, one way to give civil war legitimacy is to foreignize part of the national population. Finally, regarding affects mobilized by nationalism in a civil war, we may state that the feeling of helplessness becomes one of the main sources of psychological distress faced by children. With respect of affective forms of resistance to the war, we may highlight children’s play as an act full of empowering intentions. It can be a performance of the desire for the victory of their national side or even a performance of the times of peace.