El concepto de ciudadanía en la obra de José Saramago

Abstract

José Saramago is the author of a prolific literary work that spans diverse genres, as well as being a public figure committed to the times he lived in. Both in his public life and in his literary activity, he manifested a deep concern for the problems that, from his point of view, beset human beings, such as the state of democracy, dependence on economic power, intolerance, selfishness or indifference, to name but a few of the aspects that concerned him. He approached all these subjects through his works of fiction, as well as in the numerous articles, conferences and published non-fiction works. In our opinion, all this concern was intended to vindicate the role of an active citizenry that, in some way, became aware of its importance. With the intention of verifying this hypothesis we propose the realization of this Thesis focused on studying the concept of citizenship in the whole of his work. Given the diversity of genres and breadth of titles of this author, it was essential to limit the scope as much as possible. To this end, we proposed to divide the work into fiction and non-fiction and to select a series of titles that were significant from our point of view; moreover, we decided to exclude from our study those genres that were not narrative. All these decisions were submitted for evaluation to a group of experts by conducting a questionnaire elaborated in this respect. With the results of this consultation, which endorsed the decisions that we made, we proceeded to the analysis of two concrete works, one fiction – Ensaio sobre a cegueira - and another non-fiction – Cadernos de Lanzarote - through the use of Atlas Ti, a program developed mainly for the qualitative analysis of recorded oral discourse and not for written texts. Through this analysis we verify that the concept of citizenship is present in both works in a direct way and is manifested through a series of values that compose it. In our research these values have to do with responsibility, tolerance, decision making, sharing, coexistence, respect or civility, to mention only the main ones that have appeared in the analysis of the selected works. Discovering this structure in José Saramago's written account has allowed us to construct a conceptual map that draws his concept of citizenship. We believe that in the future the study of this concept could not only be extended to other works of his and to other genres not analyzed in this thesis, but it could also enable the elaboration of a didactic material that helps the critical construction of citizenship from the texts of this universal writer who is José Saramago.