Dyonélio Machado: Pampean literature beyond its borders

Abstract

The current paper presents an analysis of the set of figurations of characters coming from the border in Dyonélio Machado’s work, related to aspects of his essayistics. A Marxist politician persecuted by Brazilian authoritarianism at several points, producer of a writing that was progressively rejected by the publishers of his time, it will be in consideration of the ambivalence of his representations of the border that we can find a new bias of interpretation for his literature. Following Walter Mignolo’s epistemology of the border, which proposes a liminal knowledge that seeks to consider both sides of the border without fixating on either, Dyonélio Machado’s proximity to a particular form of social poetry coming from the pampas can be recognised, similar to the examples of political gauchesca analysed by Ángel Rama. Whether through contact with Uruguayan culture in his hometown, where he also witnessed civil wars and manifestations of caudillismo in various forms, or through the ambivalence found in various characters from the “eastern frontiers”, a border knowledge can be recognised inscribed in his literature. In the in-between place between criminals and military heroes, Dyonélio Machado’s representations take into consideration the rejected and anonymous figures of official political history, as well as they question the violence of the great modernisation projects, in the vision of their forgotten ruins at the geographical limits of the nation.