The discursive recreation of technology in Oswald de Andrade: a non-conventional reading

Abstract

The research focused on the issue of imported technology brought to Brazil, mainly from Europe, during the Old Republic period and investigated how Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954) discursively integrated this technological reality in his work Manifesto Pau-Brasil (1924). Oswald recreates this reality in a dialogical way, elaborating a portrait of the country in which the local color manifests itself from traditions that go back to the colonial and imperial past, also encompassing a certain popular and everyday culture in which religiosity, beliefs, superstitions clash that are in opposition to technological modernity. From this confrontation, tense and dynamic, a certain national identity emerges as a result of polarized dimensions, but that interpenetrate, without excluding themselves. The dialogic resource is intensified by a perspective in which the impasses, unevenness and disjunctions of this polarization are manifested, as well as its organic coexistence. We explored the articulation between the technical universe and literary language, a theme that is barely dealt with in critical readings in the field of Literature studies.