The Performative and The Subversion in Acenos e afagos, by Joao Gilberto Noll

Abstract

In our reading of Noll's Acenos e afagos (2008), we sought to highlight the subversions arising from the narrator's actions in relation to the hegemonic speech about gender. The criticism of Austin's ideas on speech acts, through the readings of Derrida (1991) and Butler (2016), as interpreted by Culler (2000), Nascimento (2001) and Rodrigues (2012), shows that the relationship between the performative and the literary language is that of a parasitic, citational and iterative discourse. Consequently, it is able to install the transgression of ideas at the core of discourse, therefore subverting both the idea of sexual gender and that of literary language. Our considerations will point out the subversions of the narrator when dealing with gender and his discourse.