The following text is a transcription and translation from a conversation with Eduardo Santos, a ... more The following text is a transcription and translation from a conversation with Eduardo Santos, a Brazilian tagger and street artist who currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal. Santos, more widely known as Shp (‘sheep’), member of the group Pregos (literally translated as ‘nails’), responded to questions about identity, life philosophy and art through a series of WhatsApp audios. In addition, Shp and Xiên, another Brazilian migrant, provide a voice-over for a ten-minute video that shows a ‘night in the life’ of a pixador, the name given in Brazilian Portuguese to a street artist who practises the Brazilian variant that mixes elements of tagging and graffiti. Topics broached include: a comparison between pixo and Brazilian funk, marginalized arts, the street, the origins of pixo in Lisbon, respect and the presence of Brazil in the tuga (Portugal). English subtitles were done by Mariana Gil, a Brazilian photographer and migrant living in Aarhus, Denmark (video link: https://www.instagram....
The city of Lisbon has scar tissue, a reminder of pain and trauma that administrations often glos... more The city of Lisbon has scar tissue, a reminder of pain and trauma that administrations often gloss over as urbanization. The demolition of dozens of neighbourhoods has been documented in cinema, both documentaries and feature-length conventional films. Even more stark is the footage from grassroots archivists, who have accompanied since the beginning the raw despair of displacement, an internal uprooting after a generation or more of Luso-African migrants making place in the Lisbon area, especially in the adjacent municipality of Amadora. Over a decade ago, I followed a few of the displaced former residents of Fontaínhas to Casal da Boba, a social neighbourhood, to inquire and record memories about such scars. In late 2020, I reconnected with these interlocutors and discovered more storytellers who have a curious relationship with the former improvised neighbourhood of Bairro de Santo Filomena. This article is a piece of ethnographic fiction based on those experiences.
Abstract The Cape Verdean rap scene is a site of convergence, yet for most it is the antithesis o... more Abstract The Cape Verdean rap scene is a site of convergence, yet for most it is the antithesis of “world music” and its accompanying creative hybridity. While Cape Verdean musical genres such as morna, koladera, and funana fit well into cosmopolitan tastes of Euro-African creolization and postcolonial dance parties, Cape Verdean rap reveals a side of globalization where the contradictions of territory, identity, and migration are not easily resolved by a lilting voice, a studio recorded string section, or a call simply to “move that body.” By 2007 the term kaçubodi, the Kriolu pronunciation of “cash or body,” had become a catch-all phrase to describe the rise of urban violence and the emerging youth aesthetic strongly associated with rap music and a hip-hop clothing style. In this article I sketch out the contextual factors of crime, deportation, and neoliberalism in order to focus on the multiple rivalries of territory as they play out in the city of Praia and throughout the Cape Verdean diaspora. I argue that Cape Verdean rappers’ “beefs,” or heated rivalries with other rappers, actually place Cape Verdean rap in the world and provide general insight into how the spatiality of popular culture practices influences what languages such as Kriolu, Portuguese, and English really mean.
In 1997 the rap group Racionais MCs (the ‘Rational’ MCs) recorded the album Sobrevivendo no Infer... more In 1997 the rap group Racionais MCs (the ‘Rational’ MCs) recorded the album Sobrevivendo no Inferno (Surviving in Hell), subsequently changing the hip-hop scene in São Paulo and firmly establishing itself as the point of reference for youth across Brazil. In an era when rappers needed to defend the very idea that their work was indeed music and a time when neighborhoods such as Capão Redondo, from where Racionais frontman Mano Brown hailed, often topped homicide statistics, Sobrevivendo empowered as it provoked. As one journalist noted, “the underworld of São Paulo’s working-class suburbs is dominated by cheap thrills and provides little space for representation.” Sobrevivendo changed all of that; a brutal but invigorating imagination was born. The lure of Sobrevivendo is the particular combination of word and sound that powerfully involves listeners, especially those millions of young Brazilians who live in the neighborhoods on the periphery of Brazil’s megacities. This book celebr...
This chapter examines the new challenges of identity politics that arose after 1974 with the offi... more This chapter examines the new challenges of identity politics that arose after 1974 with the official end of Portuguese colonialism and the implosion of the Salazar-Caetano fascist regime. More specifically, it considers the ways that Cape Verdean Kriolu's conflicted essence both reinforces and interrupts the national paradigm of Portuguese belonging and inclusion represented in a host of Luso categories and discourses. The chapter first argues for the importance of Creole by using history, theory, and ethnography. It then discusses the power of Lusotropicalism as an organizing ideology that continues to inform Portuguese notions of national identity. It also looks at Kriolu rappers and their challenges to lusotropicalism and other Luso discourses, such as Lusofonia. Finally, it highlights the manners in which Kriolu has become a vehicle for difference and discontent in the former metropole of Lisbon.
Musicians rapping in Kriolu—a hybrid of Portuguese and West African languages spoken in Cape Verd... more Musicians rapping in Kriolu—a hybrid of Portuguese and West African languages spoken in Cape Verde—have recently emerged from Lisbon's periphery. They popularize the struggles with identity and belonging among young people in a Cape Verdean immigrant community that shares not only the Kriolu language but its culture and history. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and Cape Verde, this book introduces Lisbon's Kriolu rap scene and the role of rap music in challenging metropolitan Portuguese identities. It demonstrates that Cape Verde, while relatively small within the Portuguese diaspora, offers valuable lessons about the politics of experience and social agency within a postcolonial context that remains poorly understood. As the book argues, knowing more about both Cape Verdeans and the Portuguese invites clearer assessments of the relationship between the experience and policies of migration. That in turn allows us to better gauge citizenship as a balance...
Portugal, juntamente com todos os países da Europa ocidental, está numa encruzilhada histórica. C... more Portugal, juntamente com todos os países da Europa ocidental, está numa encruzilhada histórica. Como a migração a várias localidades européias tem se intensificado e diferenças nas formas de linguagem, religião, raça e etnia tornaram-se mais visíveis, a questão que se apresenta é: como as comunidades têm reconfigurado suas identidades? No caso de Lisboa, graças à longa prática da transculturação durante o colonialismo português e, mais tarde, no período pós-colonial, há um pressuposto generalizado de que Portugal estaria em posição de responder bem a uma crise. No entanto, para alguns jovens, especificamente os rappers kriolu, essa versão de multiculturalismo remete ao Lusotropicalismo, um poderoso mas problemático discurso de congenialidade e excepcionalismo portugueses. Neste artigo, analiso kriolu, um idioma híbrido de Cabo Verde, cuja base consiste do português europeu e línguas da África ocidental, como uma complexa formação de identidade. Mais do que língua, o kriolu se manifesta, particularmente, em arranjos de espaço dentro de uma série de desenvolvimentos de bairros e imaginações coletivas. Com base na etnografia colhida em pesquisas de campo e de arquivo, argumento que o kriolu interrompe a mitologia nacional do Lusotropicalismo, assim como o paradigma do “creole” na literatura acadêmica em torno de encontros coloniais e identidades emergentes. Esta “interrupção” em nome da diferença é ainda mais peculiar dado o fato de que os caboverdeanos têm historicamente se beneficiado dos discursos e regulamentos assimilacionistas, como o Lusotropicalismo.
Revista Semestral Do Departamento E Do Programa De Pos Graduacao Em Sociologia Da Ufscar, May 11, 2013
A hipotese deste artigo parece uma contradicao. Baseado numa interpretacaode exemplos empiricos d... more A hipotese deste artigo parece uma contradicao. Baseado numa interpretacaode exemplos empiricos de processos heuristicos em nivel individual ecoletivo, argumento que a margem e um centro de producao material e simbolica.A premissa do texto e que a margem nao representa simplesmente os restosde arte, literatura, interacao social, urbanizacao, desenvolvimento ou outrasformas de producao humana. Ao contrario, a margem facilita a constituicao deobjetos cotidianos e nocoes de senso comum da vida humana.
This introduction provides an overview of this Special Issue: ‘Night Stories: Urban Narratives of... more This introduction provides an overview of this Special Issue: ‘Night Stories: Urban Narratives of the Migrant Lives in Europe’, which originates from work undertaken within the collaborative HERA-funded research project ‘Night spaces: Migration, culture and integration in Europe’ (NITE). It argues that experiences and representations of the urban night are often overlooked in Humanities research. It contends that understandings of this overlooked dimension of the urban night can provide important and more nuanced insights into questions of migration. It surveys the collection of academic and artistic contributions to the Special Issue, which provides a transdisciplinary survey on the storytelling that emerges from diverse experiences of migration and their connections to the urban night.
The following text is a transcription and translation from a conversation with Eduardo Santos, a ... more The following text is a transcription and translation from a conversation with Eduardo Santos, a Brazilian tagger and street artist who currently lives in Lisbon, Portugal. Santos, more widely known as Shp (‘sheep’), member of the group Pregos (literally translated as ‘nails’), responded to questions about identity, life philosophy and art through a series of WhatsApp audios. In addition, Shp and Xiên, another Brazilian migrant, provide a voice-over for a ten-minute video that shows a ‘night in the life’ of a pixador, the name given in Brazilian Portuguese to a street artist who practises the Brazilian variant that mixes elements of tagging and graffiti. Topics broached include: a comparison between pixo and Brazilian funk, marginalized arts, the street, the origins of pixo in Lisbon, respect and the presence of Brazil in the tuga (Portugal). English subtitles were done by Mariana Gil, a Brazilian photographer and migrant living in Aarhus, Denmark (video link: https://www.instagram....
The city of Lisbon has scar tissue, a reminder of pain and trauma that administrations often glos... more The city of Lisbon has scar tissue, a reminder of pain and trauma that administrations often gloss over as urbanization. The demolition of dozens of neighbourhoods has been documented in cinema, both documentaries and feature-length conventional films. Even more stark is the footage from grassroots archivists, who have accompanied since the beginning the raw despair of displacement, an internal uprooting after a generation or more of Luso-African migrants making place in the Lisbon area, especially in the adjacent municipality of Amadora. Over a decade ago, I followed a few of the displaced former residents of Fontaínhas to Casal da Boba, a social neighbourhood, to inquire and record memories about such scars. In late 2020, I reconnected with these interlocutors and discovered more storytellers who have a curious relationship with the former improvised neighbourhood of Bairro de Santo Filomena. This article is a piece of ethnographic fiction based on those experiences.
Abstract The Cape Verdean rap scene is a site of convergence, yet for most it is the antithesis o... more Abstract The Cape Verdean rap scene is a site of convergence, yet for most it is the antithesis of “world music” and its accompanying creative hybridity. While Cape Verdean musical genres such as morna, koladera, and funana fit well into cosmopolitan tastes of Euro-African creolization and postcolonial dance parties, Cape Verdean rap reveals a side of globalization where the contradictions of territory, identity, and migration are not easily resolved by a lilting voice, a studio recorded string section, or a call simply to “move that body.” By 2007 the term kaçubodi, the Kriolu pronunciation of “cash or body,” had become a catch-all phrase to describe the rise of urban violence and the emerging youth aesthetic strongly associated with rap music and a hip-hop clothing style. In this article I sketch out the contextual factors of crime, deportation, and neoliberalism in order to focus on the multiple rivalries of territory as they play out in the city of Praia and throughout the Cape Verdean diaspora. I argue that Cape Verdean rappers’ “beefs,” or heated rivalries with other rappers, actually place Cape Verdean rap in the world and provide general insight into how the spatiality of popular culture practices influences what languages such as Kriolu, Portuguese, and English really mean.
In 1997 the rap group Racionais MCs (the ‘Rational’ MCs) recorded the album Sobrevivendo no Infer... more In 1997 the rap group Racionais MCs (the ‘Rational’ MCs) recorded the album Sobrevivendo no Inferno (Surviving in Hell), subsequently changing the hip-hop scene in São Paulo and firmly establishing itself as the point of reference for youth across Brazil. In an era when rappers needed to defend the very idea that their work was indeed music and a time when neighborhoods such as Capão Redondo, from where Racionais frontman Mano Brown hailed, often topped homicide statistics, Sobrevivendo empowered as it provoked. As one journalist noted, “the underworld of São Paulo’s working-class suburbs is dominated by cheap thrills and provides little space for representation.” Sobrevivendo changed all of that; a brutal but invigorating imagination was born. The lure of Sobrevivendo is the particular combination of word and sound that powerfully involves listeners, especially those millions of young Brazilians who live in the neighborhoods on the periphery of Brazil’s megacities. This book celebr...
This chapter examines the new challenges of identity politics that arose after 1974 with the offi... more This chapter examines the new challenges of identity politics that arose after 1974 with the official end of Portuguese colonialism and the implosion of the Salazar-Caetano fascist regime. More specifically, it considers the ways that Cape Verdean Kriolu's conflicted essence both reinforces and interrupts the national paradigm of Portuguese belonging and inclusion represented in a host of Luso categories and discourses. The chapter first argues for the importance of Creole by using history, theory, and ethnography. It then discusses the power of Lusotropicalism as an organizing ideology that continues to inform Portuguese notions of national identity. It also looks at Kriolu rappers and their challenges to lusotropicalism and other Luso discourses, such as Lusofonia. Finally, it highlights the manners in which Kriolu has become a vehicle for difference and discontent in the former metropole of Lisbon.
Musicians rapping in Kriolu—a hybrid of Portuguese and West African languages spoken in Cape Verd... more Musicians rapping in Kriolu—a hybrid of Portuguese and West African languages spoken in Cape Verde—have recently emerged from Lisbon's periphery. They popularize the struggles with identity and belonging among young people in a Cape Verdean immigrant community that shares not only the Kriolu language but its culture and history. Drawing on fieldwork and archival research in Portugal and Cape Verde, this book introduces Lisbon's Kriolu rap scene and the role of rap music in challenging metropolitan Portuguese identities. It demonstrates that Cape Verde, while relatively small within the Portuguese diaspora, offers valuable lessons about the politics of experience and social agency within a postcolonial context that remains poorly understood. As the book argues, knowing more about both Cape Verdeans and the Portuguese invites clearer assessments of the relationship between the experience and policies of migration. That in turn allows us to better gauge citizenship as a balance...
Portugal, juntamente com todos os países da Europa ocidental, está numa encruzilhada histórica. C... more Portugal, juntamente com todos os países da Europa ocidental, está numa encruzilhada histórica. Como a migração a várias localidades européias tem se intensificado e diferenças nas formas de linguagem, religião, raça e etnia tornaram-se mais visíveis, a questão que se apresenta é: como as comunidades têm reconfigurado suas identidades? No caso de Lisboa, graças à longa prática da transculturação durante o colonialismo português e, mais tarde, no período pós-colonial, há um pressuposto generalizado de que Portugal estaria em posição de responder bem a uma crise. No entanto, para alguns jovens, especificamente os rappers kriolu, essa versão de multiculturalismo remete ao Lusotropicalismo, um poderoso mas problemático discurso de congenialidade e excepcionalismo portugueses. Neste artigo, analiso kriolu, um idioma híbrido de Cabo Verde, cuja base consiste do português europeu e línguas da África ocidental, como uma complexa formação de identidade. Mais do que língua, o kriolu se manifesta, particularmente, em arranjos de espaço dentro de uma série de desenvolvimentos de bairros e imaginações coletivas. Com base na etnografia colhida em pesquisas de campo e de arquivo, argumento que o kriolu interrompe a mitologia nacional do Lusotropicalismo, assim como o paradigma do “creole” na literatura acadêmica em torno de encontros coloniais e identidades emergentes. Esta “interrupção” em nome da diferença é ainda mais peculiar dado o fato de que os caboverdeanos têm historicamente se beneficiado dos discursos e regulamentos assimilacionistas, como o Lusotropicalismo.
Revista Semestral Do Departamento E Do Programa De Pos Graduacao Em Sociologia Da Ufscar, May 11, 2013
A hipotese deste artigo parece uma contradicao. Baseado numa interpretacaode exemplos empiricos d... more A hipotese deste artigo parece uma contradicao. Baseado numa interpretacaode exemplos empiricos de processos heuristicos em nivel individual ecoletivo, argumento que a margem e um centro de producao material e simbolica.A premissa do texto e que a margem nao representa simplesmente os restosde arte, literatura, interacao social, urbanizacao, desenvolvimento ou outrasformas de producao humana. Ao contrario, a margem facilita a constituicao deobjetos cotidianos e nocoes de senso comum da vida humana.
This introduction provides an overview of this Special Issue: ‘Night Stories: Urban Narratives of... more This introduction provides an overview of this Special Issue: ‘Night Stories: Urban Narratives of the Migrant Lives in Europe’, which originates from work undertaken within the collaborative HERA-funded research project ‘Night spaces: Migration, culture and integration in Europe’ (NITE). It argues that experiences and representations of the urban night are often overlooked in Humanities research. It contends that understandings of this overlooked dimension of the urban night can provide important and more nuanced insights into questions of migration. It surveys the collection of academic and artistic contributions to the Special Issue, which provides a transdisciplinary survey on the storytelling that emerges from diverse experiences of migration and their connections to the urban night.
Programme of the 3rd international conference of REBRAC (Rede Europeia de Brasilianistas de Análi... more Programme of the 3rd international conference of REBRAC (Rede Europeia de Brasilianistas de Análise Cultural)
In the late 1970s and early 80s, as the grip of the Brazilian military dictator-ship loosened sli... more In the late 1970s and early 80s, as the grip of the Brazilian military dictator-ship loosened slightly and civil society transitioned into a more favorable position, artists were at the forefront of defining a new society. Musical artists RitaLee and Roberto de Carvalho asked foreigners to rethink their homeland paradisein the first quote, taken from their 1982 recording. On the other hand, fellow mu-sical artists Aldir Blanc and Maurício Tapajós saw the essence of the country as a“quarrel”, an existential conflict over the debt due to Brazil’s indigenous roots andinsistent presence. Two contrasting perspectives expressed through music withone underlying commonality. Brazil is a product of the encounter, one enmeshedin complex and violent hierarchies.Currently, Brazilians find themselves in a distinct but comparable moment ofunrest, violence and contestation. This bi-lingual thematic issue, with papers inEnglish and Portuguese, stems from a panel organized by members of the RedeEuropeia de Brasilianistas de Análise Cultural (REBRAC) on occasion of the first international conference of ABRE (Associação de Brasilianistas de Europa) at Leiden University (The Netherlands) in late May of 2017.The scope of the thematic issue emergent from our panel discussion is to reflecton the place and potentialities of culture in Brazil at this time of crisis, mindful of the dramatic erosion of progressive social initiatives currently underway and thethreat to democracy itself.
Morten Nielsen é professor de Antropologia Social da Universidade de Aarhus,
na Dinamarca. Um vi... more Morten Nielsen é professor de Antropologia Social da Universidade de Aarhus,
na Dinamarca. Um viajante, teórico e aficionado pela questão urbana, Morten
aprecia a tempestuosa dinâmica da cidade como algo que gera seu próprio conhecimento. Financiado por organizações dinamarquesas e internacionais, Morten
Nielsen tem realizado pesquisas de campo em Moçambique, Brasil, Escócia e
Estados Unidos ao longo dos últimos quinze anos. Seu foco são questões ligadas à
temporalidade, materialidade, cidadania, política urbana com relação ao acesso à
terra, formação do estado-nacional, governabilidade formal/informal, arquitetura
vernacular e as cosmologias políticas. Ele foi diretor da Coleção Etnográfica do
Moesgård Museum, em Aarhus. Além disso, Morten fundou a URO (http://uro.
au.dk/), uma plataforma transdisciplinar para estudar participação cívica e design
colaborativa da/na cidade. A entrevista foi realizada nos dias 1 e 2 de maio de 2018.
A ideia da entrevista surgiu depois de uma conversa que tivemos, antes, em uma
reunião de planejamento do projeto URO em Aarhus. Na conversa a seguir, o leitor
irá se deparar com uma série de questões, entre elas os motivos de investigar, hoje
em dia, a questão urbana e quais as formas possíveis de se engajar com a cidade.
Para além disso, há uma discussão muito interessante sobre as dificuldades de
definir, hoje, termos como “cidade”, espacialidade, temporalidade e globality.
Reflecting on some of Brazil’s foremost challenges, this book considers the porous relationship b... more Reflecting on some of Brazil’s foremost challenges, this book considers the porous relationship between legality and illegality in a country that presages political and societal changes in hitherto unprecedented dimensions.
It brings together work by established scholars from Brazil, Europe and the United States to think through how (il)legalities are produced and represented at the level of institutions, (daily) practice and culture. Through
a transdisciplinary approach, the chapters cover issues including informal work practices (e.g. street vendors), urban squatter movements and migration. Alongside social practices, the volume features close analyses of cultural practices and cultural production, including migrant literature, punk music and indigenous art.
The question of (il)legalities resonates beyond Brazil’s borders, as concepts such as "lawfare" have crept into vocabularies, and countries the world over grapple with issues like state interference, fake news and the definition of "illegal" migration. This is valuable reading for scholars in Brazilian and Latin American Studies, as well as those working in literary and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, geography and political science.
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Papers by Derek Pardue
na Dinamarca. Um viajante, teórico e aficionado pela questão urbana, Morten
aprecia a tempestuosa dinâmica da cidade como algo que gera seu próprio conhecimento. Financiado por organizações dinamarquesas e internacionais, Morten
Nielsen tem realizado pesquisas de campo em Moçambique, Brasil, Escócia e
Estados Unidos ao longo dos últimos quinze anos. Seu foco são questões ligadas à
temporalidade, materialidade, cidadania, política urbana com relação ao acesso à
terra, formação do estado-nacional, governabilidade formal/informal, arquitetura
vernacular e as cosmologias políticas. Ele foi diretor da Coleção Etnográfica do
Moesgård Museum, em Aarhus. Além disso, Morten fundou a URO (http://uro.
au.dk/), uma plataforma transdisciplinar para estudar participação cívica e design
colaborativa da/na cidade. A entrevista foi realizada nos dias 1 e 2 de maio de 2018.
A ideia da entrevista surgiu depois de uma conversa que tivemos, antes, em uma
reunião de planejamento do projeto URO em Aarhus. Na conversa a seguir, o leitor
irá se deparar com uma série de questões, entre elas os motivos de investigar, hoje
em dia, a questão urbana e quais as formas possíveis de se engajar com a cidade.
Para além disso, há uma discussão muito interessante sobre as dificuldades de
definir, hoje, termos como “cidade”, espacialidade, temporalidade e globality.
It brings together work by established scholars from Brazil, Europe and the United States to think through how (il)legalities are produced and represented at the level of institutions, (daily) practice and culture. Through
a transdisciplinary approach, the chapters cover issues including informal work practices (e.g. street vendors), urban squatter movements and migration. Alongside social practices, the volume features close analyses of cultural practices and cultural production, including migrant literature, punk music and indigenous art.
The question of (il)legalities resonates beyond Brazil’s borders, as concepts such as "lawfare" have crept into vocabularies, and countries the world over grapple with issues like state interference, fake news and the definition of "illegal" migration. This is valuable reading for scholars in Brazilian and Latin American Studies, as well as those working in literary and cultural studies, anthropology, sociology, geography and political science.