In the contradiction of legal theories around the connection on right and truth: an analysis of the tale “Grieves fat!”, from Machado de Assis

Abstract

It problematizes how literary discourse put in suspicion the positioning of juridical theories that privilege the understanding of the law as search of the truth. In the field of research the authors opted for the perspective of Law in Literature, which may seem more traditional, less provocative; however, seek to study the tension between truth and lie that stands out and confers uniqueness to the universe of law, and literature as a counterpoint to question the limits of alleged universal search for truth that legal and judicial practices insist on privileging. The focus of the work is a differentiated reading of Machado de Assis's short story entitled Suje-se gordo!, Where the author, taking a humorous point of view, questions the very status of the jury's court, enshrined in Brazilian law, as a place of making truth, but also a source of illusion or delusion, insofar as it is an ideological instrument. For this, the authors seek to refer theoretically to works of Michael Foucault, with a relativistic and particularist profile, especially in the work The truth and the juridical forms, as well as the critique of law in modernity, of the moral values derived from it and the proposal of an ethic that is characterized by the transvaluation of Western values found in Nietzsche. The authors end up pointing out many more questions than assertive ones as Machado de Assis reveals in his tale, regarding the possibility of the existence of universal parameters in search of truth.