“Só um buraco perdido no oco do mundo,” The Affective Subjects of the Wasteland in Narradores de Javé (2003)

Abstract

Although 1990s Brazilian cinema revisits the sertão to find Brazilian identity, by the 2000’s some films begin challenging that narrative. As the state and its narratives move to the city, the sertão begins to be represented as a wasteland. This paper examines one such film, Narradores de Javé (The Storytellers; Caffé, 2003). Previously studied for its use of narration to countering the discourses of modernity, I propose that the film also constructs the wasteland as a social space by enacting affectivity to build a sense of communal narrative. First, I engage with Zygmunt Bauman’s Wasted Lives (2004) to explore how the state denies its inhabitants citizenship as subjectification. Second, in response to this disavowal, the villagers mobilize what Kathleen Stewart calls Ordinary Affects (2007) to subjectify by creating a social space through the communal sharing of stories that wasted objects allow them to recall.