Autofiction and experience in O pai da menina morta, by Tiago Ferro

Abstract

Based on the concepts of “experience of the outside” by Maurice Blanchot and “interior experience” by George Bataille, in this paper I analyze the displacement of the subject to the outside in the novel O pai da menina morta, by Tiago Ferro. Although Blanchot rejects the literary Self of the work and its personal speech, I propose, autofiction as a way of reading Ferro’s work. Autofiction materializes in the text not as a stylistic and critical device (as is often the case in contemporary literature), but as a displacement of the author’s empirical self to the other, engendering a double that no longer refers to a real precedent, neither consists in a copy, whose meaning is only effective with the reader and his personal experience that will fill in the blank spaces of the narrative. Therefore, I intend to demonstrate how both readings are not contradictory but complementary once the narrative core is displaced, after the loss experienced by the anonymous character and his need to adjust against absence. From his own experience, Ferro creates a lyrical and fragmented novel that, born from death, looks for what is still alive in this subject who neither wants to, nor can, be called the Self.