Tragedy and desire in The Brothers: A Novel, by Milton Hatoum

Abstract

Based on the dialogue between literature, psychoanalysis and philosophy, we present some reflections on how the plot of the literary work The Brothers: A Novel, by the Amazonian writer Milton Hatoum, and Nietzsche’s positions in The Birth of Tragedy, allow us to think about issues concerning the birth of culture and art based on the irremediable conflict between law and desire, as advocated by Freud in The Disquiet in Culture. In this way, Freud, Nietzsche and Milton Hatoum point out to us the impossibility of thinking about subjectivity through stagnant and dichotomous categories such as good and evil, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong. This discussion, while rescuing conflict as an irremediable condition of existence, shows that art is a plausible way out to try to circumvent it, without ever extinguishing it.