Clarice Lispector in palimpsestic times: a preliminary study on the "Metaphysics of Alterity"

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to reflect on trips and traces of Jewish culture in Clarice Lispector’s literary creation, aiming to broaden the critical understanding about the author. Therefore, we will, in a preliminary and fast way, recall aspects of Judaism, raised by the pertinent biographical and literary criticism, which marked Clarice's life trajectory, and how these aspects, directly or indirectly, reappear in her literary writing. Then, we will try to observe the phenomena between the opacity of Jewish culture and literature in Clarice as a mode of temporal multiplicity that allows us to place the author's literary creation in line with a philosophical experience of recognized authors, marked by the 20th century Jewish diaspora. Our hypothesis is the idea that, through the experience of exile, Clarice manages to mold a literature that encompasses “palimpsestic times” of pluriversal cultures and mentalities.