Mediação de leitura: um estudo da metáfora da esquizofrenia produtiva de João Cezar de Castro Rocha, intelectual do presente

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate the metaphor of productive schizophrenia in the work of João Cezar de Castro Rocha, a professor and contemporary literary critic. In order to accomplish this, we start with three of his books in which this theoretical concept appears most strongly: Exercícios críticos: leituras do contemporâneo, 2008; Crítica literária: em busca do tempo perdido?, 2011; and Por uma esquizofrenia produtiva: (Da prática à teoria), 2015. We assume that this metaphor carries within itself a theory of reading mediation, since it takes into account the audience of each written text, i.e. the non-specialist reader, with a more general profile (or even the non-reader of a given literary text), such as the newspaper reader; and the academic reader who also studies the issues put into circulation by the critic. To follow our path, we divided the dissertation into three parts: 1) In the first one, we show how the metaphor of productive schizophrenia appears in these texts; we discuss the concept of metaphor with which we work based on Michel Pêcheux and the studies of Discourse Analysis; and we analyze the functioning of this metaphor in various writings by Rocha for both the academic world and the wider public; 2) In the second part, we investigate the memory of this metaphor. By doing so, we bring to light the historicity of the term schizophrenia itself and the writing work for both the university and the newspaper of authors such as Antonio Candido, Adolfo Casais Monteiro and Silviano Santiago; 3) Finally, in the third part, we propose a debate on reading mediation and other issues that orbit around the metaphor of productive schizophrenia. From our research, we understand reading mediation as one of the dimensions of the tripod of the productive schizophrenia metaphor, which is also made up of the text and the reader. Thus, we are faced with a way of mediating reading that has as one of its main features considering the text and the reader as fundamental parts of the production of meanings. From this perspective, in line with what Rocha proposes, literature, and therefore reading, is taken as an experience, which allows the reader to experience the text. Furthermore, from this study, we understand how João Cezar de Castro Rocha, teacher, literary critic and contemporary intellectual, allows us to reflect on a way of mediating reading that involves dimensions such as the formation of the reader, creation and the relationship with the socio-political, issues that permeate the lives of subjects on a daily basis. In addition, these aspects are crossed by a relationship with the present time, and therefore with the time of reading.