UNDERNEATH CULTURE: THE FADING IDENTITIES IN "THE CENTAUR IN THE GARDEN", BY MOACYR SCLIAR

From a comparative approach between literature and cultural studies, this paper aims at analyzing the image of the centaur in The Centaur in the Garden, by Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar, which becomes a reading key to analyze the human condition and their dichotomy reason-instinct. A well elaborated and involving narrative that, starting from Greek mythology, allows us to make a journey between the real and the imaginary; in which the presence of a fantastic being is inserted in daily relationships, causing uncomfortable impacts in a conservative society that struggles to keep its traditions alive. In the game of intertextualities present in the work, the centaurs are configured as a representation of the postmodern subject, marked by conflicts between tradition and modernity, and above all, by the fragmentation of identity, which has materialized in the physical hybridism of the characters. Throughout the work, their diverse condition causes the centaurs to face prejudice and intolerance, bringing to light some of the most relevant issues of postmodernity: issues of belonging and exclusion, recognition and social invisibility, highlighting the cultural marks of a traditional society exposed to constant conflicts as to the acceptance of the diverse, as to the universal condition of the Subject. Thus, understanding the text as an example of the fantastic real as defined by Jorge Luis Borges, and considering the text as a game between author and reader, where the text is the board and whose rules are launched by the author, Scliar's work is a complex game with multiple layers, which uses the fantastic as the main strategy for the unveiling of its interpretative possibilities. For this, in dialogue with the aesthetic proposal of the real fantastic, it will be used as theoretical reference the it will be used as theoretical reference the works by Alejo Carpentier, Irlemar Chiampi, Italo Calvino, Wolfgang Iser, Stuart Hall and Zygmunt Bauman.