LIVING IS AN URGENT TASK!

SELF-WRITING IN THE HENFIL COMICS

Abstract

Our intention in this article is to investigate the life of the cartoonist Henrique de Souza Filho and the Henfil, from the characters of the Mad monk. For this analysis, we will use the category of "self-writing", created by Foucault, which proposes to investigate the mechanisms developed by the subjects for the creation of autonomous spaces of subjectivity. Unlike the historical research already developed with this analytical perspective, we do not focus our attention on letters or diaries, but on their graphic production. We argue that the Mad Monk characters are a part of the process of self-construction of the author. We understand that it was through these characters that the author gave life and voice to the questions raised during childhood and youth, exposing emphatically the limits of their historical context and duality which he carried within himself, between his conservative religious creation and the need to forge himself as a free and autonomous subject. A subject of himself, for himself and in dialogue with the world.