Between eutopia and outopia: testimony, decoloniality, and an anthropology of becoming in Um rio sem fim, by Verenilde Pereira

Abstract

Presented as a M.A dissertation at the University of Brasília (UnB), the novel Um rio sem fim (1998), by Verenilde Pereira, in addition to questioning the thresholds that separate the poetic from the academic-scientific discourse, manages to build a decolonial framework in which it establishes a position of resistance to the founding fantasies of the modern idea of utopia that, five centuries after the arrival of the first colonizers, still resist in the Brazilian Amazon region. In the novel, the reader comes across a Salesian mission settled in the north of Amazonas, a place that, commanded by an Italian bishop, reminds what many may be unaware of or prefer to ignore: in some parts of Brazil, fantasies of the New World still survive, supported by ideals of civilizing models and rationalities, both based on an ethnocentric perspective. Knowing that such fantasies are at the roots of the modern sense of utopia, and aware that the relationship between individuals and spaces is fundamental for the understanding of subjectivities and social relations shown in literary construction, it seems to be instigating and fruitful to observe the way in which the term utopia is articulated in Um rio sem fim from the displacement proposed by Thomas Morus, between eutopia, “the place where everything is ok”, and outopia, the “non-place” (Gk ou = not + topos = place). In order to do so, we draw on an anthropology of becoming in conjunction with the concepts of testimony and decoloniality.