Banida por encarceramento: uma leitura de “A alta”, de Maria Judite de Carvalho

Abstract

This paper analyzes the short story "A alta" written by contemporary portuguese fiction writer Maria Judite de Carvalho. The selected story is contained in the collection Seta Despedida (1995) and thematizes issues that are recurring: the female, old age, loneli-ness, transience of life, the silence, the banishment, death into life. In this article, we focus our analysis on the female character, emphasizing their status as “mulier sacra” (drawing a parallel with a term used by Giorgio Agamben: "homo sacer"). This charac-ter is banished: his womanhood and elderly condition corroborates so there is this ban which is, paradoxically, an 'inclusive exclusion': while the character is deleted, is incor-porated into the social sphere, that is, for her, kind of "prison" from which it can not escape.