Da imperfeição ou o complexo de Babel

Abstract

Based on a novel published in the beginning of the Millennium – A Imperfeição, by João Paulo Sousa –, the author critically reflects on the problem of ethic and aesthetic communication, framed by a reinterpretation of the myth of Babel as the symbolic and blessed origin of the cultural and literary universe. The novel’s characters, taken to be symbols of contemporary society, struggle with the «imperfection of words», representing themselves as foreign beings devoured by the misunderstanding of communication. However, it is on the journey across the dream of a perfect language that they are marooned, victims of their unconditional belief in the ideology of identity and unicity that characterize our times of globalization.