Does capitalism know the cost of life? - Reflections on capitalism and the immigrant subject in the book A hora da estrela by Clarice Lispector and in the poem “Morte e Vida Severina” by João Cabral de Melo Neto

Abstract

The work highlights a connection between psychoanalysis and literature, which come together because they work with the same raw material: the word. We aim to discuss the ethics of psychoanalysis as one which opposes capitalism, since it is not based on happiness, usefulness, or obedience to the categorical imperative. We start from the poem “Morte e Vida Severina”, by João Cabral de Melo Neto (1955), and the book A hora da estrela, by Clarice Lispector (1977). These literary works become an exemplary portrait of how literature can witness the many Severinos and Macabéas, run over by the predatory effects of capitalist discourse, which seems to contain the fantasy of an unbroken whole. We place the characters on the side of psychoanalysis, since they seem to cause a wound in the glorious appearance of modernity, a hole in utilitarianism, a fracture in the service of goods, as the ethics of psychoanalysis is that of desire, a discourse constituted from failure , of not-knowing, of the absence of guarantees.