The marginal testimony in GB Montsho's poetry

Abstract

Based on the notion of testimony (Seligmann-Silva, 2023b), understood as a rupture with colonial knowledge and aesthetics, this paper offers/articulates an analysis of the rap Luke Cage (2019) and the poem Bandeira Vermelha (2021), written by GB Montsho, a young black poet from the Rio scene, with the aim of maintaining that his poetry, as well as contemporary marginal literature (Faria; Penna; Patrocínio, 2015; Ferréz, 2005), in addition to carrying out a reinterpretation of the historical present and past, construct a subjective and ethnic turn, which necessarily implies a discussion about race and class. By assuming the political positioning as a constitutive element of the poetic experience, and by creating other registers of thought and language, GB Montsho's poetry establishes other ethical and aesthetic pacts that call into question both the colonial devices still in force and their violence and takes upon itself the narrative of history, thus contributing to the creation of other literary and political-cultural imaginaries.