Abstract
In his article "The Geopolitics of Amazônia in Souza's Fiction" Thomas O. Beebee examines the ways in which the historical fiction of Brazilian author Márcio Souza (1946-) confronts prevailing notions of Brazilianness conceived as the unity of citizens within a fixed territorial space. Souza undermines this notion by frequently using non-Brazilians as protagonists of his novels that have as their theme the struggle over control of territory "within" Brazil. Beebee reviews the role played by the concept of national territorial control in theories of nationalism and the modern state, including in the Brazilian school of geopolitics developed by Eduardo Backheuser and Golbery do Couto e Silva. National territorial control has been an issue in Brazilian history owing to the country's expansionist tendencies. Beebee examines a range of Souza's fiction -- from the early Galvez, Imperador do Acre (1976) through the popular Mad Maria (1986) to the Grão-Pará tetralogy (1997-2008) -- that challenges the foundations of Brazilian geopolitics by detailing how the country's Amazon region has been both a colony of the southern and northeastern regions of the country and a free zone for international capitalism and capitalists.
Recommended Citation
Beebee, Thomas O.
"The Geopolitics of Amazônia in Souza's Fiction."
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
11.3
(2009):
<https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1489>
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