Peripheral Culture in Urban Brazil: New Voices Speak from the Margins

• In Event: Reconsidering the circulation metaphor: Latin American cultural critiques of global exchange

Abstract

Over the past decade, Brazil has risen as an important political and economic player in the global scenario. The widely praised government-funded social programs that have lifted thousands out of poverty along with the hosting of the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics have put Brazil on the map as an emerging center of economic global power. Brazil’s prominent role as a global and regional leader presumes a shift in the configuration of power relations in which the periphery becomes part of the center. This paper will interrogate to what extent such re-location reflects Brazil’s current social and cultural realities. More specifically, this paper will examine if and how the production of culture has been affected by this alleged shift by looking at current works identified with the Literatura Periférica movement. Some of the questions I’ll engage with are: To what extent is the centrifugal circulation of knowledge a factor in the production of a distinctly self-identified peripheral culture? In what ways is the center-periphery paradigm challenged from a peripheral perspective? What are the implications of that shift of focus for the local lives of periphery dwellers in a moment of global visibility?

Author

• Leonora Paula, Rice University