Everyone’s Love, Seed-Words to Change the World: Grammars of Resistance by Cultural Collectives from the Brazilian Racialised Periphery in Times of Health Crisis

• Published in: Journal of Critical Southern Studies 2023-02, Vol.4 (2023), p.1-13
• Main Author: DE ALENCAR, CLAUDIANA NOGUEIRA
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0796-1901; 0796-1901
• DOI: 10.3943/jcss.48

This article focuses on the production of a cultural grammar of resistance from the analysis of linguistic-political practices of youth cultural collectives in the racialised periphery of Fortaleza, Ceará, experienced in the cartographies of Viva a Palavra, a popular education program committed to confrontation of violence through the valorization of racialised and feminised subaltern ways of life and self-organized practices of art and culture. Words-world were generated, in cartographic participatory and prefigurative research. Such words and the generative themes that resulted from the participatory-pedagogical methodology of the project itself allowed the analysis of language games, such as culture circles which, although some were created remotely due to Covid 19, function as resistance linguistic practices, in the face of social suffering, aggravated by the Covid 19 pandemic. In this study, Paulo Freire’s concepts of word-world were articulated with Wittgenstein’s concepts of language games and language therapy (in a collective liberatory sense). Also central are Veena Das’ works on social suffering and cultural grammar. The collective analysis embodies the effects of violence on the socialities of youth peripheral racialised groups and the linguistic practices (which are also material and ontological-epistemological) of resistance to violence.