DESEJO E GOZO NO CONTO “BEIJO NA FACE”

Abstract

This paper presents a reading of the short story "Beijo na face" by Conceição Evaristo, based on the theoretical contributions of psychoanalysis and Greimasian semiotics. The analysis of the narrative allowed us to verify that the clash between desire and jouissance structures the plot, manifesting itself at the three textual levels; from the basic structure, in which the opposition between the categories of movement and stagnation is verified, to the narrative and discursive levels. The field of desire is shown from a desiring subject, in conjunction with pleasure and generated from fantasies of completeness and omnipotence; the field of jouissance, on the other, is revealed from the dynamics of the worn-out marriage, especially from the husband's point of view, who refuses to accept the loss of the object (wife) and ends up trapping both in a morbid dynamic, governed above all by sadism and which, as is typical of jouissance, seeks to make it impossible for the subject to access desire.