Ethical-Reparative reconfigurations of the literary today

Abstract

This essay aims to debate the evidence of an ethical-reparative function for literature and literary studies today. Therefore, it is divided into two fundamental moments, two argumentative channels that, without a totalizing intention, point out the general perspective of a changing scenario. On the one hand, the literature of the 20^th century is presented from the image of a supposed negativity or radical intransitivity, capable of “undoing the work” in its “aesthetics of suppression”. On the other hand, from an introductory debate around some of the places of transitivity envisioned for literature at the beginning of the 21^st century, the literary is now conceived as an ethical-reparative field, responsible, among others, for “giving visibility”, “remembering”, “repairing damage”, “comforting,” etc. This transition results in a notion of growing discomfort in relation to social artifacts that, even in the artistic field, cannot be reconciled with a utilitarianism that cannot preserve anything intact, not even literature.