RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Desmesura e perplexidade JF Luso-Brazilian Review JO Luso-Braz Rev FD University of Wisconsin Press SP 103 OP 125 DO 10.3368/lbr.55.1.103 VO 55 IS 1 A1 de Moraes Vieira, Beatriz YR 2018 UL http://lbr.uwpress.org/content/55/1/103.abstract AB This article examines the issues of social and intellectual inadequacy under the state of exception after the 1964 coup d’état. Considering the historicity present in the lyrical voice and the formal texture of the poems, rather than the poet herself, I pay close attention to some verses written by Zulmira Ribeiro Tavares to interrogate what kind of subjectivity can be formed in this sociopolitical context, and what are the specificities and phases of the “state of exception” in Brazil, a postcolonial country of late and peripheral modernization. Drawing from Critical Theory, I propose a reflection on the relationship between “unmeasured” politics, exceptionality and damaged life, presenting the hypotheses that from this derives the meaning of the “perplexity” manifest in the historical sources of that period, and that such perplexity is a deep cultural mark, although barely visible, in the country.