“The learning of agony” as an experience of the contemporary world in Os cus de Judas

Abstract

The “agony learning” triggered by the narrator of Os cus de Judas during the war is also learned by the human being in other battles imposed by the contemporary society, in which the fixed identities, based on the belonging to promoting groups of safety and comfort, have been shattered. Thus, the reconfiguration of the national identity works on restructuring the individual identity in the anguishing search for configuring an answer to the question: “Who am I?”. Is this sense, this paper proposes an study of the configuration of the author/protagonist’s identity in the contemporary Portuguese novel Os cus de Judas. Supporting the arguments are the theoretical works of Paul Ricoeur about memory writing and Zygmunt Bauman on the social conditions of this age called by him “liquid modernity”, in addition to the appreciation of the criticism on the author and his work.