Power on the margins: Machado’s representations of blackness and whiteness in the short story “The Secret Cause”

Considering critical comments related to the lack of treatment of black ethnic-racial issues by Machado de Assis in his works, the present study intends to propose hypotheses related to strategies for literary representation of characters and structuring of themes and plots, used by the author, which can reveal other possible approaches regarding blackness and whiteness portrayed narratively. Starting from the analysis of the short story “A causa secreta”, by Machado de Assis, we also aim to reflect on the different representations of the figure of the capoeirista in Brazilian history and literature. The hypothesis is that Machado's representation of capoeiristas in the selected story, although subtle, ends up elevating them to the status of a collective historical-social character of power in a plot in which the protagonists are white characters, with high purchasing power, marked and guided by different pathologies. The research will be based on the conceptions of raciality device, by Sueli Carneiro, of pact of whiteness, by Cida Bento, of union based on a common enemy, by Frantz Fanon and historical contextualization of capoeira, by Letícia Vidor Reis. As for the literary representation of characters, we will rely on studies on fictional characters according to Antonio Candido, and polyphony according to Mikhail Bakhtin.

KEYWORDS:
Machado de Assis; representation; blackness; capoeira; black characters