Reconfigurações espaço-temporais sob o autoritarismo: a presença do cronotopo do limiar em Asilo nas Torres de Ruth Bueno

Abstract

This study analyzes the novel Asilo nas Torres by Ruth Bueno through the lens of the concept of chronotope, particularly the threshold chronotope developed by Mikhail Bakhtin. It first discusses the theoretical foundations of dialogism, polyphony, and chronotope, as well as their relations to Kantian philosophy and Einstein’s theory of relativity. The research then addresses the context of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship, understood as a space-time of rupture, fear, and surveillance — elements directly associated with the threshold chronotope. Finally, it interprets Asilo nas Torres, highlighting how enclosed spaces, silence, displacements, and textual fragmentation symbolically reflect experiences of oppression, alienation, and resistance during the dictatorial period. This research contributes to expanding the understanding of the intersections between aesthetics, literature, and history, revealing how Ruth Bueno’s narrative embodies, in literary form, the effects of authoritarianism and the gestures of resistance inscribed in the subjectivities shaped by this context. The findings indicate that the novel constructs a liminal space of tension, in which characters experience a suspended temporality and a space marked by erasure and isolation. This is a qualitative, exploratory, and bibliographical study, grounded in theorists such as Bakhtin, Gaspari, Aquino, Napolitano, Rodeghero, Brait, Fiorin, and Machado. Keywords: Chronotope. Brazilian civil-military dictatorship. Threshold. Literature. Ruth Bueno.