Some considerations on the autonimic modulation in the chapter LV from Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas, by Machado de Assis

Abstract

The aim of the present article is to point out some characteristics of the wordless enunciations in the LV chapter — “The Old Dialogue between Adam and Eve” — from Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, 1881), by Machado de Assis. In that chapter, the “deceased man recently an author,” in the book (Brás Cubas) substitutes his and Virgília’s speeches by punctuation marks, limiting the possible meanings of these mute signs to the title that works as their summary, which reveals the necessity to reconcile the enunciation theories with other theories that support them. Thus, to read the dialogue in its own enunciation, some of Jacqueline Authier-Revuz’s ideas on autonimic modulation (Rey-Debove’s expression) will be applied as main theory, parting from the study of the unconscious (based on Lacan’s works) and the opacity of the sign. The characters’s speeches during the sexual encounter to which they surrender, and as they are going to be presented in this study, are indexes of a language made clear only by information found in adjacent chapters that works as paratexts, opaque signifiers that express the loving rapture of the lovers with words that constitutes a non-language that turns the characters into signifiers of the studied scene.