Abstract

This article analyzes testimonial literature produced in the aftermath of the May 2024 floods in Porto Alegre, where the historic rise of Lake Guaíba devastated the city and fractured the symbolic fabric of its population. The objects of analysis are Julia Dantas’ chronicle "La Casa Inundada" and the collaborative digital archive Diário da Enchente. The study is organized along two vectors. The clinical vector, grounded in the framework of Benyakar and Seligmann-Silva, proposes that writing operates as a symbolic barrier constructed a posteriori of the impact, inscribing psychic fracture and enabling its processing. The ethical-political vector, drawing on Benyakar, Michel Fariña, and Agamben, interprets the collective archive as a polyphony that restores the singularity of survivors against institutional narratives that reduce them to statistics. The central hypothesis contends that this emergency literature acts simultaneously as a protective shield for the psyche and as a political practice for reconstructing the social bond.

Keywords: Testimonial literature | Psychic trauma | Art as a conveyor of the Real