Why Read and Listen to Stella do Patrocínio?Anna Carolina Zacharias

At first, I think of the translation of Stella do Patrocínio as the reverberation of a displacement of many of our beliefs about a Brazil that never existed — a world that never existed. Stella’s falatório (‘chatter’)22‘Chatter’, in Portuguese falatório, is the term used by Stella do Patrocínio to refer to her power of enunciation. makes evident what the archives, History, and psychiatric and artistic institutions mask. It may sound uncomfortable to those who find it difficult to redefine their routes of thinking and of social, political, economic, cultural, and artistic perception.Beginning of page[p. 264] For her narrative addresses these issues from a standpoint of experience that is still neglected today and evaluates the functioning of Brazilian psychiatric hospitals at large. The chatter exposes how these institutions are intertwined with racism, colonial remnants, and a generalized crime by the State — a crime that has been legal for centuries and which has, among other violations of rights, operated through silencing, imprisonment, police persecution, and apparatuses aimed at making unwanted subjects disappear. As with other violations, these have caused the progressive loss of the space-time references of those they have captured. As a rule, they have created illness rather than promoted health.

As soon as the diagnosis has been made, the institutionalized subject loses their right to speak, for anything they say could become a confirmation of their delirium and detachment from reality. Their speech is automatically silenced. And if we examine who is silenced and the relationship between these silences and the erasures they produce, we come to the dreadful realization that Brazilian psychiatric hospitals, like prisons, are also political prisons.

As this book aims to provide biographical data along with Stella do Patrocínio’s intellectual production, I feel obliged to warn you that, in order to read it, it is important to be willing to avoid mistakes in thinking already made by literary critics when they have engaged with the falatório (chatter) and theorized about her life. The first mistake is to believe in some kind of neutrality. If we are willing to listen carefully, it will not be difficult to perceive that Stella not only denies her belonging to that space of illness, but actually opposes it. Her narrative stands in opposition to diagnoses, hospital archives, the police, and even literature.

This is because when Stella do Patrocínio was introduced to the Brazilian literary market, albeit Beginning of page[p. 265] posthumously, this established an interlocution with psychiatric hospitals, not with Stella herself. Thus, the presentation of the book that introduced her to the literary scene resembles the institutional documents of the Colônia, such as the Patient Report, more than any critical biography that dialogues with the way Stella presented herself and understood her own trajectory. Therefore, her insertion into the literary market was also a reification of the exclusion that simultaneously drew her closer to the asylum prisons. Thus, the ‘Stela’ do Patrocínio presented as a Brazilian poet in the book Reino dos bichos e dos animais é o meu nome (Kingdom of the Critters and of the Animals Is my Name), published in 2001 by Azougue (Rio de Janeiro), has very little in common with the real Stella do Patrocínio. Only her dates of birth and death, the names of some relatives, and her hospitalization dates coincide. Not even her name has been spelled properly, missing an ‘l’. As a result, throughout my investigation, I have come to the conclusion that ‘Stela’ do Patrocínio, the one from Reino, is much more like a character.

It is therefore important to understand the contexts in which Stella do Patrocínio was introduced to the Brazilian intellectual scene, and to problematize the reasons for her exclusion, including from that very scene. This scene presents her without truly listening to her, thus producing an erasure that continues the exclusion promoted by psychiatric hospitals. For these and other reasons, it is not possible to equate her chatter with madness, as this designation, given to her in absentia, is constantly denied by her. Stella uses the term ‘mental illness’ only to refer to the illness caused by the hospital. She even explains: time does not pass, we pass.33Reproductions of excerpts of Stella do Patrocínio’s chatter are in italics. This is the time of captivity, of racism Beginning of page[p. 266]— a time in which not everyone shares the same space and position, privileging the heirs, the hereditaries, and giving opportunities to those who are born rich and millionaires.

Literature, therefore, could not answer the question ‘Who was Stella do Patrocínio?’, even though it tried. However, the way in which Stella do Patrocínio was created as a character offers a valuable example of how asylums — and even literature — function as spaces of exclusion. Though these documents attempted to possess the power of truth about Stella do Patrocínio, they serve as examples of their own operationalization. They say much more about how the asylum worked than about Stella herself. Her chatter, in turn, can be understood as the memory of Stella do Patrocínio’s trajectory and intellectual legacy.

This has taught me that we should replace representation with presentation. She did this herself during her lifetime, having been recorded between 1986 and 1991. These are the main records that have come down to us, as well as some transcriptions made by nurses, doctors, and psychologists in notes available at Colônia Juliano Moreira:

You are from no place. You eat and you don’t do anything. You should throw yourself from inside to outside so you can enjoy your nature. I respond that you accuse me and accuse yourself. Now I decided to use the voice of the social assistant, the boss and Mrs. When I hear voices, I keep wandering in time and in emptiness. Today I heard ‘leave Teixeira Brandão ’cuz you don’t live here’. When I try to escape through the gate, they won’t let me.44Medical transcript, 21 January 1988, patient 00694, Colônia Juliano Moreira Archives, trans. by Regina Alfarano.

We are faced with the intellectual production of someone who has claimed to have gone as far as possible, who has Beginning of page[p. 267] jumped over and unjumped walls, who has found in the power of her voice her way of circumventing imposed silence. As we listen to the chatter and learn from it, the memory of Stella do Patrocínio remains alive. Her voice reverberates and continues to go as far as possible. I strongly believe that once we come into contact with the content made available in this book, something deep within us is transformed. I hope and foresee that this experience will be a valuable one. If you will excuse me, I will now leave so that Stella can speak for herself.