BISPO, Raphael. Times and silences in narratives: ethnography of loneliness and aging in the limits of the speakable. []. , 20, 2, pp.251-274. ISSN 0873-6561.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to an ethnography of loneliness and abandonment that may affect some people in certain moments of their lives. Such approach will be made here from the analysis of the trajectory of chacretes, erotic dancers who during the 1970s and 1980s were famous characters of Brazilian television. Loneliness is understood in this text as an emotional experience resulting from the daily negotiations operated by the subjects about their own lives. Based on the case of a single chacrete, the analysis focuses on the work of the passage of time in the fabling and description of feelings considered violent and tortuous by those who experience them. The extreme experience of pain, suffering and loneliness of an aging woman promotes the management of words and memories about her past, demonstrating that loneliness is not an idiosyncratic sentiment, “non-relational”, but rather the result of contacts and social exchanges.

: emotions; loneliness; life stories; narratives; ageing; gender.

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