Sub Cultural and Countercultural Sensibility in Paulo Coelho's Eleven Minutes

Abstract

This research focuses on the countercultural sensibility and counter discourses in Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho’s novel Eleven Minutes. So as to counter the dominant discourses of the society like capitalism, patriarchy, phallocentrism, genital mutilation, commercialization and derealization of sex and so on, Coelho has used Maria, a Brazilian girl, as his protagonist who is full of beat sensibility. She journeys from Brazil to Switzerland in the quest for true love. In the course of her journey, she comes to realize the hegemonic discourses of patriarchy and capitalism that are responsible for the romanticization and derealization of love and sex. She works as a sex worker in Geneva, discovers the annihilation of female pleasure in sex and strongly counters the capitalist and pallocentric construction of sexuality. She sees the sorrow of mankind rooted in the dominant capitalist, patriarchal and exclusive discourses, counters them and advocates for free will and one’s freedom to search for the possibility of life.