Aesthetic Experiences in Movement: Literary Production in the Periphery of São Paulo

The more central the disputes over urban spaces and their meaning become, the more the problems and the cultural landscape of cities become both the object of and stage for diverse interests. As a result, the margins occupy a prominent position in social science, because they redefine the points where art and urban life, inclusion and exclusion, culture and violence intersect. In this context, a cultural phenomenon emerging in the outlying areas of São Paulo has been observed for over a decade now: the rise of literary writers from poor neighborhoods, who use the adjectives “marginal” and/or “peripheral” to refer to themselves and their products. The phenomenon has evolved to the point where one can speak of the consolidation of a new marginal literature. This robust literary production is written by authors who do not “fit” in the symbolic hierarchies’ canon and do not utilize the more traditional spaces of consecration. Between the late 1990s and early 2000s, these writers began to lead an important artistic transformation of their respective territories by organizing massive events popularly known as saraus. Even today, the saraus gather hundreds of people from across the city on a regular basis, which has been altering the cultural dynamics of these urban spaces, as well as the representations of the outskirts of São Paulo. The goal of this work is to analyse such a specific literature – namely works that are centred on experiences of violence, exclusion, and racism – and to map out the process of forming of new writers and the community of interpersonal and translocal networks that these actors have been developing since the late 1990s. Thus I would like to verify to what extent it is possible to link literary creation to community participation in that phenomena in evolution.