Hate as a means of survival in The apocalypse of workers, by Valter Hugo Mãe

Abstract

In Valter Hugo Mãe’s 2008 novel O apocalipse dos trabalhadores (The Apocalypse of Workers), although the protagonists are the cleaning ladies Maria da Graça and Quitéria, the behavior of Ukrainian immigrant Andriy has a profound impact on the reader from the outset. Displaced from his homeland due to poverty caused by political conflicts and the resulting humanitarian crisis, Andriy migrates to Portugal, more specifically to Bragança, a border town belonging to the former province of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro. This migratory flow of Slavs (Ukrainians, Russians, and Bulgarians), which intensified after 2000, has survival as its main objective, which is achieved, with difficulty, through work in construction and agriculture, sectors that assimilate this cheap labor. Andriy, a young man of only 23, has to survive alone, far from his family, to whom he still has to send money, in a foreign country, with a language he does not know at all. To face these challenges, he imposes the greatest privations on himself, depersonalizes himself, becomes a mechanical subject (according to Bachelard’s theory) or a kind of device (as we learn from Foucault and Agamben) without feelings. Andriy responds to humiliation, at first, with hatred (which, according to Freud and Kristeva, is very common), as a form of repudiation of the society that subjugates him in every way, but in the end, humanity prevails, and through the intervention of Quitéria’s love, Andriy rediscovers his subjectivity and what appears in it as affection.