La literatura marginal periférica y el silencio de la crítica

Abstract

We review the reception of Peripheral Marginal Literature in the Brazilian literary field. This literary movement, born at the turn of the century, is produced by subjects identified with spaces of social exclusion, such as urban peripheries, favelas, or prisons. At first, some works of this kind were received with surprise, celebrating what was considered to be an "unusual discovery". There was usually an emphasis on its "internal view" of these universes, with books that propose "multiple reading pacts", combining the novelistic, the testimonial, and the auto-biographical. However, this consideration does no justice to the wealth and diversity of this movement which, with the proliferation of saraus on the peripheries of São Paulo, is forming an independent "literary system" marked by orality and the performative dimension of literature. In this new scenario, hegemonic criticism remains deaf.