O presente trabalho consiste na formulação, no desenvolvimento e exame da hipótese de que o conto de Machado de Assis produz um “efeito de vertigem”, desestabilização inquietante na leitura, corte com uma pretensa linearidade, e que, sustentamos, encontra-se ligado à estrutura da narrativa. O “efeito de vertigem” apresenta-se em contos que, podemos dizer, são representativos da força do estilo de Machado, por uma razão não qualquer – funcionam como “operadores de passagem”: a vertigem joga com continuidade/descontinuidade, fascínio/ perturbação, as simultaneidades, o enigma na lida com os limites, com o real, na ficção e na vida. Encontramos nos contos, na proximidade e em relação ao efeito de vertigem, o trato ficcional que põe em questão as descontinuidades fundamentais, interrogantes da condição humana – o sexo e a morte; as mesmas que configuram as perguntas que se colocaram para Freud, em toda sua obra, pelo viés da clínica psicanalítica. A verdade subjetiva tem íntima relação com a ficção, portanto escolhemos seguir examinando a proximidade da forma da narrativa machadiana com sua vertigem, do trabalho de Freud com as “passagens” na relação ao inconsciente (aqui ganha destaque a relação entre o chiste, a obliqüidade e a ironia) e da elaboração de Lacan com relação à estrutura do sujeito, com a topologia da banda de Moebius. Neste ponto, as teses de Ricardo Piglia sobre a forma do conto integram o exame sobre a estrutura, assim como a consideração do termo das “passagens” sobre as quais tanto trabalhou Walter Benjamin. A conclusão leva à consideração do “efeito de vertigem” como um princípio de composição (não chave de leitura) do conto, presente em contos que podemos situar como representativos da obra de Machado de Assis. Passagens paradoxais, lugares de trânsito dos enigmas que são transportados do imaginário social para a grande ficção, recorte de algo singular, mas que diz também de uma dimensão do coletivo de um contexto e de um tempo, via o “relâmpago” da forma conto, ao modo machadiano. / The present work consists in formulating, developing and examining the hypothesis in which Machado de Assis’ tale produces a “vertigo effect”, disturbing destabilization during the process of reading, cut with an intended linearity, and that, we sustain, is connected to the narrative structure. The “vertigo effect” is present in tales that, we can say, represent the strength of Machado’s style, not for any reason – they work as “passage operators”: the vertigo plays with the continuity/discontinuity, fascination/perturbation, simultaneities, the enigma in dealing with the limits as the reality, in fiction and in life. We find in the tales, in the proximity and in relation to vertigo effect, the fictional trait that interrogates the fundamental discontinuities, questions of the human condition – sex and death; the same that configured the inquiries which came to Freud throughout his production, through the psychoanalytical clinic. The subjective truth has an intimate relation with fiction, so that we chose to keep on following the proximity of the Machado’s narrative form with its vertigo, of Freud’s work with the “passages” in relation tothe unconsciousness (point in which the relation among the joke, obliquity and irony is highlighted) and of the elaboration by Lacan on the structure of the subject, with the topology of the “Moebius band”. At this point, the assessment of Ricardo Piglia on the form of the tale integrates the exam about the structure as well as the consideration of the term “passages”, so much developed by Walter Benjamin. The conclusion takes into consideration the “vertigo effect” as a composition principle (not as reading key) of the tale, present in tales that we can situate as representative of Machado de Assis’ work. Paradoxal passages, transitory places of the enigmas that are transported from the social imaginary to the great fiction, cut of something unique, but that also brings a dimension of the collectivity of a context and of a time, through the “bolt” of the form tale, in Machado’s way.

Walter Benjamin warned in 1940 of a certain inconspicuous threat to political thinking, not least of all to materialism, that takes progress as an historical norm. Implicit in this conception is what he describes as an empty continuum of time along which the prevailing tradition chronicles its own mythic development and drains everyday life of genuine historical experience. The myth of progressive history advances insidiously today in consumeristic and technocratic attempts at reconciling cultural imagery with organic nature. In this dissertation, I pursue the contradictions of such images as they crystallize around the natural history of twenty-first century commodity society, where promises of ecological remediation, sustainable urban development, and climate change mitigation have yet to introduce a true crisis of historical experience to the ongoing environmental crisis of capitalism. A more radical way of seeing the cultural representation of nature would, I argue, penetrate its mythic determination by market forces and bear witness to the natural-historical ruins and traces that constitute, in Benjamin's terms, a single "catastrophe" where others perceive historical continuity. I argue that Benjamin's critique of progress is instructive to interpreting those utopian dreams, ablaze in consumer life and technological fantasy, that recent decades of growing environmental concern have channeled into the recovery of an experience of the natural world. His dialectics of nature and alienated history confront the wish-image of organic abundance with the transience of its appropriated expression in the commodity-form. Drawing together this confrontation with a varied literature on collective memory, nature, and the city, I suggest that our poverty of experience is more than simply a technical, economic, or even ecological problem, but rather follows from the commodification of history itself. The goal of this work is to reflect upon the potentiality of communal politics that subsist not in rushing headlong into a progressive future but, as Benjamin urges, in reaching for the emergency brake on the runaway train of progress.

This dissertation explores the relationship of two of the most prominent women intellectuals of the twentieth century, Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag. While they are not commonly considered to be related figures – Arendt is mainly recognized as a political thinker, Sontag is an icon of postwar popular culture – it has been anecdotally noted that they lived and worked in the same intellectual environment in postwar New York City, where their paths crossed a few times. However, a comprehensive systematic study of their relationship is missing. Starting from their Benjamin portraits of 1968 and 1978, I argue that Arendt’s and Sontag’s relationship is significant in terms of the German and US American tradition of literary criticism: Both women acted as transatlantic critics invested in cultural transfer between postwar US and Germany, and they employed similar styles of citation and editorial strategies to create and inscribe themselves into an authoritative literary tradition. With Arendt and Sontag, I discuss the critic’s task in terms of citational style and as a matter of taking care of literary traditions beyond national borders. As I demonstrate through comprehensive, in-depth archival analysis and close readings, Arendt and Sontag intervened with their Benjamin portraits in a heated debate about critical methods surrounding the editorial management of Benjamin’s estate and legacy through Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem in late 1960s Germany. Arendt’s portrait made Benjamin’s work available to an English-speaking audience for the first time and Sontag popularized his prominence in the US even further. Both stage Benjamin as a literary figure rather than a philosopher. Stylistically, they employ related strategies of citational mimicry to create an intimate connection between their voices and Benjamin’s, granting even unfamiliar readers access to Benjamin’s complex writing. Through constant dialogue with his work, their affective and affirmative mediation has significant editorial qualities. By preserving and promoting Benjamin as a critic in the US, Arendt and Sontag created a transatlantic tradition of literary criticism in which they inscribed themselves to gain critical authority in singular yet similar ways. Tracing the relationship between the portraits archivally, I argue that their similar citational creation of discursive authority results from Sontag’s comprehensive study of Arendt’s work and is thus an example of critical skill building through stylistic imitation. Rendering the hidden citational traces between the portraits transparent, I show how this line of influence ironically yields a lack of credit to Arendt on Sontag’s part. Like Arendt, Sontag reifies rather than breaks patriarchal citational chains. Illuminating what Arendt calls a “hidden tradition” – consisting in stylistically visible yet inexplicit commonalities – I draw on terminology gained from the current debate on critical method in Western literary studies to argue that the portraits afford a concept of criticism between such polemic poles as “surface” versus “depth” reading, “description” versus “interpretation” or “affirmation” versus “suspicion.” Characterizing this critical nuance with Arendt and Sontag as related critics, my study delineates a genealogy of a transatlantic mode of close reading with hermeneutic roots and a feminist twist.