Memory and identity in Metade cara, metade máscara, by Eliane Potiguara

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of Metade cara, metade máscara (2018), by Eliane Potiguara, drawing on Gabriela Nouzeilles’s (2011) inquiry into “the moribund remnants of the political” in societies marked by state violence and neglect. We seek to understand how Potiguara’s literature weaves together memory, identity, and resistance, with an emphasis on Indigenous female experience. The study is grounded in theoretical perspectives from Benjamin (1994), Quijano (2005), Lugones (2020), among others, articulating literature, history, and politics. We conclude that the work performs an act of recovering Indigenous collective memory through the interplay of history and fiction, reasserts the identity of Indigenous women by reconnecting them to their ancestral heritage, and advances a utopian vision of inclusive social justice.