Anything that means

the protagonism of language in the novel Ecologia, by Joana Bértholo

Abstract

This work proposes a reading of the novel Ecologia, by Joana Bértholo, exploring the creative use of the most diverse intersemiotic experiments – QR codes, emojis, works of art, photographs, computer operational simulations, etc. –, which in the narrative instance in question seem to want to give language a tone of substantial protagonism, with a view to building a reflective dystopia. To this end, we will discuss these and other themes in the light of Byung-Chul Han (2015), Giovana Madalosso (2022), Italo Calvino (1990) and Michel Foucault (1996), examining the visionary character of this young author, who problematized in her book, among other topics, the advancement of a nasty anti-democratic atmosphere today, as well as the danger of the “anthropocene”, a concept metaphorized in the plot through the “logic of echoes”, highlighting a growing and hegemonic power of megacorporations, with their destructive impacts generated/amplified by social media and Fake News, for example. Against the current of all this, literature would still resist as one of the last territories in which cognition and freedom would be productively protected.