DOSSIER: RESISTANCE STUDIES IN THE FRONT OF CATASTROPHE AND THE STATE OF EXCEPTION

Abstract

The production of a dossier entitled Studies of resistance in the face of catastrophe and the state of exception arises from the need to strengthen research on forms of resistance in different lines of action that assert themselves in the field of literary studies. In this sense, we seek to bring together texts by researchers who collaborate with the qualification and development of scientific and intellectual dissemination in dialogical processes between the areas of History, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Cinema, Visual Arts and Literature. This is affirmed due to the significant reflections on ways contrary to totalitarianism, authoritarianism and other forms of oppression. The categories Resistance and Testimony are present in studies such as those by Alfredo Bosi, Augusto Sarmento-Pantoja, Bárbara Harlow, Giorgio Agamben, Jaime Ginzburg, Márcio Seligmann-Silva, Michel Foucault, Paul Ricœur, Tânia Sarmento-Pantoja, Sigmund Freud, Stuart Hall, Theodor Adorno, Tzvetan Todorov, Walter Benjamin, among others, who have shown a broad theoretical-critical insertion in investigations related to Cultural Studies, Sociological Criticism, Historical Materialism and Discourse Analysis. This mobility through different theoretical-methodological approaches is a consequence of the principles and reasons that govern the Resistance and Testimony categories: the need to oppose forces that try at all costs and in the most varied ways to domesticate, subdue, submit, massacre, destroy. The struggles for freedom, for fundamental human and civil rights, for justice and dignity are imperatives that make up the speculative core of Resistance, as the category offers many possibilities for reflection on authoritarianism related to States of Exception, as is the case of Dictatorships. The production of a Dossier that discusses the topic at hand is, finally, an effort to consolidate, disseminate and interconnect scientific knowledge with regard to research guided by social commitment. This is strengthened even more when we find that, at the present time, extremist groups occupy the streets of our country in defense of the values and practices of the civil-military dictatorship, idealizing them to simultaneously obstruct the critical knowledge pertinent to that period and also silence its reverberations in the cultural, educational, social and political spheres. Thinking about alternatives contrary to such actions and strategies of oppression, like the dossier Studies of resistance in the face of catastrophe and the state of exception, becomes an indispensable act for contemporary scientific thought.

KEYWORDS: Resistance. A testimony. Catastrophe. State of Exception.