ABSTRACT
Based on the concept of becoming-animal, elaborated by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1997), in this work, we seek to develop an exercise of comparative criticism among contemporary novels A confissão da leoa (2012), by the mozambican Mia Couto, and O som do rugido da onça (2021), by the brazilian writer Micheliny Verunschk. In common, the two texts undertake the recovery of themes and procedures mobilized in the tale “Meu tio o Iauaretê” (2001 [1961]), by João Guimarães Rosa. Similar to the contagion experienced by the jaguar hunter of the Rosa’s narrative, who from jaguar killer began to the defender of these felines, becoming sibling with these animals, the two narratives under analysis represent a movement towards the feline subjectivities experienced by their characters. Historically, Western thinking has developed several ideological mechanisms to separate the Homo sapiens and other living animals. To this, the process of dehumanization of the colonized subjects is attached, one of the tools manipulated by the imperialist project. As a counterpoint to these perspectives, Mia Couto and Micheliny Verunschk incorporate, in their texts, discourses that enable opening to other perspectives about life. In novels, there is the tensioning of interspecific borders, once that, by fictional ways, the crossing of the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman is effective. For Mariamar and Iñe-e, protagonists of the novels, the encounter with the jaguar and lioness figures, great predators of the two continents that set the narratives, enables access to an animality silenced by oppression devices.
Keywords:
Comparative Literature; A confissão da leoa; O som do rugido da onça; Animality; Becoming-animal