Da situação kafkiana: autoritarismo e irresolução em Memórias do cárcere, de Graciliano Ramos

Prompted by the suggestive designation ‘kafkaesque atmosphere’ given by literary critics to the context of Graciliano Ramos's imprisonment in Memórias do cárcere (1953), this article proposes to compare the paradoxical dimension of Kafka's work and its possible relationship with political and legal situations marked by absurdity or exception with Ramos's novel. To this end, we will first put Kafka's work and that of some philosophers into dialog, in order to relate issues in the Czech's work to Hannah Arendt’s notion of the banality of evil and Giorgio Agamben’s ideas on the state of exception. These points will allow us to link the two sides of the article, in order to establish what the dimension of totalitarianism/authoritarianism and irresolution consists of in the work of the Czech writer, but also the kafkaesque dimension in the work of Graciliano Ramos.