José Saramago e a reparação do humano: por uma leitura dialética de Ensaio sobre a cegueira

Abstract

This article proposes a critical reading of José Saramago’s novel Blindness (1995), based on the dialogue between ethics, literature and social criticism. Considering Saramago’s authorial commitment to human causes and his reception of Marxist thought, the article analyzes how the novel articulates an active position of the writer in the face of social ills. The epigraph “If you can look, see. If you can see, notice” is taken as an interpretative axis, as it anticipates the ethical dilemmas of the plot and calls the reader to lucidity. The analysis is divided into three parts: the epigraph as a denunciation (in the light of Antonio Candido and Gérard Genette); blindness as an allegory of social degradation (based on Eduardo Lourenço); and the novel as an invitation to critical action, focus on the dialectic between barbarity and solidarity. In synthesis, Saramago strains the boundaries between seeing and understanding, proposing an ethics of responsibility and recognition of the other.