Cartografias sáficas: ressignificando uma linhagem lírica e mítica das lesbianidades por meio da poesia de Mar Becker e Patrícia Lino

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the poetic imagery of lesbian identities constructed in selected poems from A mulher submersa (2020) and Cova profunda é a boca das mulheres estranhas (2024), both by Brazilian philosopher and writer Mar Becker, in dialogue with the book A ilha das afeições (2023) by Portuguese poet and professor Patrícia Lino. Thus, it undertakes an investigation of the cartographies that compose lesbianities, with the poet Sappho as a key figure understood here as an interlocutory link between tradition and contemporary Portuguese-language poetic production. These cartographies pertain to the aesthetic and imagistic modes mobilized by the poets to lyrically represent the plural experience of being and existing as a lesbian in the present world. In this trajectory, the mythical narrative of Greek loves - philia, eros, and agape - joins the discussion, articulating itself with the manifestations of love represented in the poetic texts. The main theoretical framework is Anne Carson's Eros, o doce-amargo (2022), used to consider the erotic element in the constitution of lesbian identities. Therefore, symbolic elements such as water, the muse, and desire, originating from the ancient poet's universe, are fundamental for thinking of lesbian poetry as an epistemic space for producing meanings, since we constitute ourselves through the word, in the poetic act. The articulation of these investigative threads supports the hypothesis that the poetic territory functions as a possible substrate for the reinvention of lesbian subjectivities beyond the limits imposed by the symbolic negation fostered by lesbophobic discourses.