Semiotics, power and intolerance: populism, human rights and the crisis of the Democratic Rule of Law

Abstract

This paper analyzes productions from three series of short chronicles written by José Roberto Torero Fernandes Junior and illustrated by Ivo Minkovicius, published daily on Facebook, throughout 2020, covering what we understand as three moments of perception of the pandemic caused by Covid -19 in Brazil, at least with regard to his experience in the metropolises. They are respectively called Quarentenas, Quarenteninhas and Quaquarentenas. Mobilizing reflections produced by the studies of testimony literature and semiotics, we analyze, from the reading of a literature linked to everyday life, the “translations” of the experience of living and feeling the event. As the duration of the pandemic is experienced, far beyond the most pessimistic predictions, there is an attenuation of feeling the initially impacting effect of its appearance, moving towards anesthesia that contributes to indifference as to its effects. Writing, however, is still insisting on the meaning.