THE WEIGHT OF ABSENCE: MEMORY, TRAUMA, AND TESTIMONIAL FICTION IN BERNARDO KUCINSKI’S K. – RELATO DE UMA BUSCA

Objective: Focusing on the relation between memory, trauma and narrative in K. – Relato de uma busca, by Bernardo Kucinski, a hybrid novel that combines fiction with testimony and history to document the disappearance of a young woman during the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-1985), this article analyses how the scheme articulated between fragments and subjectivity becomes an ethics for the understanding of dictatorship. Structured around a father’s frantic hunt for his missing daughter, the novel is both an account of mourning and a cultural intervention in public memory. This study has its origins in the general literary tradition of testimonial fiction and its desire to restore obliterated histories through experimental forms of narration. This analysis tries to find out how Kucinski builds a literary space of ethical representation of trauma and absence. Method: Applying a textual analysis qualitative methodology, the paper will consider structure, voice, temporal dislocation, and the role and construction of fictional documents within the novel. The methods are informed by trauma theory and narratology in showing how fragmentation, second-person narration, and polyphony testify to a ruptured experience of political violence. Results: The key findings demonstrate that the narrative fragmentation and temporal disruption of the novel serves to reflect the psychological trauma of war and the impossibility of linear recollection. Polyphonic narration weaves several voices and discourses into a counterhistory that contests with the official histories. Absence is depicted not as a lack but as being itself a space for memory and ethical witness. Novelty: The study therefore concludes that K. is both a testimony and a form of resistance turning silence into a politically and emotionally saturated literary presence. It highlights the significance of narratives to the maintenance of collective memory in post-authoritarian situations.