The Wall and the Labyrinth

The aim of this paper is to compare the censorship systems of novels during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship and in East Germany, using their ideological divergence as a reference point. Understanding censorship as a process (Müller, 2003) that links knowledge and power (Jansen, 1991), it will be demonstrated how the ideological foundation of each regime influenced their respective literary systems, consequently shaping the censorship apparatus employed. Firstly, using the theories of Bourdieu (1992) and Magerski (2021), a mapping of the respective literary fields will be conducted, investigating the power dynamics in literary production, the role of publishers, and censorship institutions. While in Brazil the military dictatorship implemented post-publication censorship on novels (Kushnir, 2001; Reimão, 2017), East Germany intervened before, during, and after the creative process, in a context where the figure of the censor often merged with that of the editor (Lokatis, 2017).

Subsequently, the censorship contexts of the novels Rummelplatz (Werner Bräunig) and Zero (Ignácio de Loyola Brandão) will be analyzed, as they reflect the social and political conflicts of their respective historical contexts. The objective is, primarily, to understand how these literary texts articulate and shape these conflicts, functioning as mirrors of the aspirations of their respective milieus, the political repression, and the frustrations of the regimes’ ideological promises.

The imposition of censorship by these regimes shows that literature is an active component of social tensions; it not only reflects the conflicts of the present, but also participates in the construction of narratives of resistance and contestation. Both Rummelplatz and Zero demonstrate the potential of literature to subvert established orders. This comparative analysis shows how censorship, representing the ideological foundations of the regimes, reflected on the literary production of these authors and how their works serve as an example for reading the social conflicts that permeated their contexts.