Mulheres subalternas: interseccionalidade, re-existência e decolonialidade nas personagens femininas de Torto Arado

Abstract

This study analyzes the representations of subalternity of female characters in the novel Torto Arado, by Itamar Vieira Junior, investigating the intersections between gender, race, class, and coloniality. The aim is to present how the protagonists Bibiana and Belonísia, black peasant women, are simultaneously constituted as subjects traversed by multiple forms of systemic oppression and as agents of resistance and re-existence. A qualitative methodology is adopted, grounded in textual analysis and critical bibliographic review, mobilizing the theoretical framework of feminist and decolonial studies, with emphasis on the contributions of Gayatri Spivak (1988), Judith Butler (1993), Patricia Hill Collins (1990), Lélia Gonzalez (1984), Silvia Federici (2017), and Michel Foucault (1975). The analysis reveals that the work transcends the merely denunciatory dimension of Brazilian social literature, configuring complex female characters who re-signify historically imposed silence as a strategy of symbolic and political resistance. The application of the intersectional perspective highlights the ways in which these women simultaneously confront the structures of institutional racism, patriarchy, and capitalist economic exploitation. The fundamental role of jarê, a religious practice of Afro-Brazilian origin present in the narrative, is identified as a privileged space for female agency and identity reconstruction, constituting a form of epistemic resistance to hegemonic Western paradigms. It is evident that Torto Arado integrates the corpus of contemporary Brazilian literature of decolonial and feminist orientation by giving visibility and protagonism to the historically silenced voices of Black, peasant, and subaltern women. The novel articulates a critical epistemology that questions the Eurocentric and colonial foundations of the national literary tradition, contributing to the emergence of new interpretative paradigms of Brazilian social reality.