abstract
This article takes as its object the articulation of voice and language in Ó (2008), by Nuno Ramos, considering the correlation of this bipartition with the dichotomy culture and nature, as it is stated in Aristotle’s Politics. The essay concludes that Ramos elaborates a descent from language to the voice, a procedure that can be understood as the inversion of the scheme outlined by Padre Antônio Vieira in the sermon “Nossa Senhora do O” (1640), in which the voice is subordinated to language, body to the spirit. We choose the narrative “Meu tio o Iauaretê”, by João Guimarães Rosa, as a possible precursor of the expression "ó" for making possible the crossing of communication lines between human and animal noises, although our conclusion is that Nuno Ramos proposes a one-way street from the spirit to animality, from logos to phoné, which allows us to link his humanist theory of the separation of culture and nature to that proposed by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben; while in Rosa there is be a perspectivist procedure, similar to the one theorized by the anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, according to which nature also possesses language, knowledge.
Keywords:
Nuno Ramos; Padre Antônio Vieira; Guimarães Rosa; language; voice; nature; culture