Subjetividade processual pós-colonial em Os Sertões do Oficina (Processual postcolonial subjectivity in the Oficina’s Os Sertões)

The aim of this article is to explore how Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of the speechless subaltern challenges/is challenged by the Teat(r)o Oficina Uzyna Uzona’s performance Os Sertões (2002-2007). Whilst Spivak’s Marxist-inspired delineation of the subaltern locks her in a binary embrace with the privileged Subject of Europe, Os Sertões presents us with a tripartite, interrelated set of subject-effects in which the Trans-Man (the militant post-colonial artist) transcends his condition as Man (the castrated subject of neocolonialism), by fusing his discourse with the rhythmic ebullience of the Pre-Man (the subaltern substratum of Brazilian society). The Oficina articulate this conflictual, hybrid, processual subjectivity on stage by returning to the primal scene of Brazil’s violent conception, revealing a differant trope potentially articulating subjectivity and representability in Brazil; rape-as-grammè. It is this strand of textual DNA, this eternal return of sexual, disciplinary and epistemic violence, which is shown to shape Brazilian subjectivity to the present day. However, by anthropofagically co-opting this tragic heritage on stage by emphasising the différance of the subaltern cultural manifestations and praise practice always already spacing the (post) colonial text, the company subvert a historic narrative of loss and privation, transforming it into a rhythmic and libidinal rite of passage whose vitality transcends the limits of phallogocentrism.