Clarice Lispector: event, God and literature

Abstract

This article aims to think, in dialogue with the spectral hermeneutics of John Caputo, especially regarding the divine experience as a event, the presence of God in Clarice Lispector’s work. Thus, we’ll dwell on two of hers short stories seeking to understand in which extent literature, event and God converge in an "experience" of the world that is, above all, destabilizing irruption in language, but also, construction of a narrative which assumes the word, paradoxically, as expression and collapse in the face of the irreducibility of God's event. In the first moment of the article, we’ll deal with the relation between event and the world, seeking to expose, from the interpretation of the short story Love, from the book Family Ties, the relation between event and everyday life. Secondly, we’ll analyze, from the short story Forgiving God, published in Clandestine Happiness, the Claricean creative process in which literature, religion and God dialogue through the distinction between event and happening. As a conclusion, we seek to evidenciate, from the dialogue with the radical hermeneutics of J. Caputo, textual elements, in the short stories, that reveal a productive dialogue between literature, philosophy and theology.