The Social Experience in Inferno Provisório: Proletarian Figuration a Century Later

Abstract

If we could determine Luiz Ruffato's work in a synthetic way, we could say, without running too much risk, that it is a formal organization of transitoriety: his characters are immersed in the spaces that consolidate them in the narrative, being guided predominantly by the flow of money, material hope, constant disillusionment with the world of consumption, and the ever-present memory of their origins. To portray this monetary comings and goings of the characters, Ruffato's narrative strategy is the precise geographical delimitation of the circulation - the origin is always the zone of Minas Gerais' forest, with a privileged focus on Cataguases; the horizon that moves them to the future is always turned to the big financial centers (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Paris etc.) - , while the narrative time is a kind of permanent tedious present, dictated by the drama of the subjects swallowed by a very low expectation of personal fulfillment.