Literature as Theological Heterology and Its Contribution to Liberation Theologies in the 21st Century: An Archaeo-Genealogical Approach Through a Brazilian Case Study

Abstract

Within Latin American Liberation Theologies, socio-analytical mediation has been decisive for interpreting structures of domination, yet it does not exhaust the lived, affective, and symbolic dimensions through which subjects inhabit and transform those structures. This article examines how Theology and Literature can broaden the moment of seeing without replacing socio-political analysis. Methodologically, it combines Antônio Manzatto’s anthropological approach with an archaeo-genealogical analysis of theological knowledge inspired by Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau. It argues that literature can function as theological heterology when alterity modifies theological language, its objects, and the position of the speaking subject. The analysis of Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Adélia Prado identifies two distinct movements: the critique of images of God associated with obedience, guilt, and the legitimation of suffering, and the emergence of corporeal, affectable, and solidaristic forms of subjectivation oriented towards the poor. The article concludes that literature does not substitute socio-analytical mediation but reveals its insufficiency when isolated from affect, imagination, memory, and subjectivation. By articulating genealogies of power and ethics, literary mediation can contribute to renewing the see–judge–act method within twenty-first-century Liberation Theologies.