Lugares de memória : o espaço como alegoria do Haiti na obra Krik? Krak! de Edwidge Danticat

• Ano de defesa: 2025
• Autor(a) principal: Macedo, Claudia Adriana
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso; Brasil; Instituto de Linguagens (IL); UFMT CUC - Cuiabá; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos de Linguagem
• Palavras-chave em Português: Fronteira; Memória; Colonialidade; Haiti; Danticat; CNPQ::LINGUISTICA, LETRAS E ARTES; Border; Memory; Coloniality
• Link de acesso: http://ri.ufmt.br/handle/1/7391

This study investigates contemporary Haitian literature through the work of Edwidge Danticat, with particular attention to the ways in which space — in its physical, symbolic, and borderland dimensions — is constructed as a narrative category and as a site of memory. The central objective is to understand how the representation of Haiti and its diaspora in Danticat’s works is articulated with historical processes of colonization, inequality, and violence, while also engaging with practices of resistance, cultural preservation, and identity formation. The hypothesis is that literary space, in Danticat, not only shapes the setting of the narratives but also operates as a critical device that challenges social, political, and affective borders, inscribing within fiction the Haitian collective memory and its reconfigurations in exile. The theoretical framework is grounded in three main axes. The first is Borges Filho’s (2007) topoanalysis, which conceives of literary space as a dynamic instance, imbued with meanings and capable of reflecting states of mind, historical experiences, and existential dilemmas. The second axis is the notion of border developed by Anzaldúa (1987) and Johansen (2018), understood as a paradoxical zone that simultaneously separates and connects distinct subspaces — whether physical, social, or cultural. This perspective is crucial for analyzing narratives situated between Haiti and the United States, between belonging and exclusion, between traumatic memory and the possibility of reinvention. The third axis draws on Nora’s (1993) concept of places of memories and Halbwachs’s (1950) reflections on collective memory, in order to examine how fiction reinscribes experiences of colonial violence, dictatorship, and migration as constitutive elements of Haitian and diasporic identity. The analysis focuses on selected short stories from Danticat’s collection Krik? Krak! (1995), in which the representation of diverse border spaces and their crossings can be observed.