A cartography of childhood: a rereading exercise of A idade do serrote, by Murilo Mendes

This paper challenges traditional readings of Murilo Mendes’ work A idade do serrote (1968), and investigates the power of a “language childhood” in connection with Mendes’ writing. For this exercise, some chapters of his memoirs are discussed in a dialogue with philosophical propositions expressed by Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, Jean-François Lyotard, and Walter Benjamin. By promoting an encounter between artistic expression and philosophical thinking, this article aims at showing childhood power as a discursive operator