THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE COCOA REGION IDENTITY IN THE WORKS OF JORGE AMADO
Discourse Analysis. National Identity. Coloniality. Postcolonialism.
This dissertation analyses two Jorge Amado’s novels: The Violent Land (Terras do Sem Fim) and Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (Gabriela, Cravo e Canela: crônica de uma cidade do interior), for the purpose of understanding the process of identity construction in the old cocoa region in the south of the State of Bahia, currently named micro-region Itabuna-Ilhéus. From the postcolonial perspective, this research aims to identify the Itabuna’s and Ilheus’ subjects features in these two books, and to put them into the context of literary aspects of the period during which they were written and published for the first time. I use the method of Discourse analysis in order to identify the key discoursive formations and their respective ideological formations that allow the writer to weave the subjects’ and the region’s identity, and also to analyse the texts and the historical, literary and scientific contexts where both works belong. I present here the points of contact and the overlapping among race, class and gender issues, noticing the social field from which the writer builds the narratives that help him to weave national identity and the cocoa region identity and to describe the subjects who live there.