POWERFUL IGNORANCE: JEALOUSY AND AIM OF TRUTH IN MACHADO DE ASSIS’ DOM CASMURRO

This essay explores the way in which the unproven suspicions of the main character of Dom Casmurro become a monologue that aims to prove the infidelity of his beloved. Using Žižek’s concept of ideology, I propose that this monologue is possible on the basis of the elaboration of an argument that allows to the narrator to produce his object of desire as an ambiguous one, fascinating and unreliable at the same time. Through the literary reconstruction of this argument, that transforms incertitude and suspicion in possibilities of epistemological and moral empowering, Machado discusses and ironizes a masculine perspective that tries to maintain its gender related privileges in a society with increasing feminine mobility.