Events

with Letícia Cesarino (UFSC), Carolina Parreiras (USP) and Fábio Malini (UFES)
mediation: Isabel Wittmann (PPGAS-USP)

On the Friday of the month channel on youtube - https://bit.ly/sextadomes

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the emergence of new communication and information technologies has been transforming forms of sociality and fueling debates inside and outside academia. In the field of media, the advent of digital has produced both changes in the fabric or materiality of cinema, photography and television images - to keep only three examples - and in the constitution of new relations of power and domination. Therefore, a series of substantial changes in the ways of agency and the relationship of its users with the world and with others. In this context of transformations, with the establishment of large conglomerates for the production of digital content and the management of communication platforms over the internet, the Sexta do Month proposes the debate “Social networks, fake news and forms of sociality”, seeking to question: How do the internet and the different digital communication platforms produce forms of sociality and political and social belonging? What are the effects of these changes on your users and their subjectivities? What is the impact of these digital networks on the institutions that modernity has consecrated as places of production of truth / objectivity? The consolidated ways of accessing these media by users and viewers, such as the massive use of smartphones in the most diverse spheres of life (social, political, affective, sexual) promote what kind of inflections in the ways in which these products are created by these large companies. technology? And, mainly, how has Anthropology and Social Sciences been dedicated to thinking about these new configurations of the social produced through these media? This edition of the Sixth of the Month addresses issues such as those outlined above, promoting a debate on how the transformations brought about by these technologies are reflected not only in the forms-content of these communication and entertainment platforms, but also in the subjectivities and notions of people of their own users.

com Flavia Medeiros (UFSC) e Aline Feitoza de Oliveira (Caaf-Unifesp)
mediação: Aline Murillo (PPGAS-USP)
Quinta-feira, 28 de maio de 2020, 17h
No canal da sexta do mês no youtube - bit.ly/2XuCu25

with Flavia Medeiros (UFSC) and Aline Feitoza de Oliveira (Caaf-Unifesp)
mediation: Aline Murillo (PPGAS-USP)
Thursday, May 28, 2020, 5 pm
On the Friday of the month channel on youtube - bit.ly/2XuCu25

Death continues to pursue the humanities, as a certain future - expected, feared, or postponed -, also disturbing the social sciences and anthropology. In addition to its reflective aspect, which offers us questions about the meaning of existence, through death ethical, political, religious and socioeconomic problems are outlined, associated with health, public security, health policy, geopolitics and biosafety.

Like any art, the routing of death, of the dead and their remnants, whether at the Medical-Legal Institute of Rio de Janeiro, among the Yanomami Indians, or at the Working Group on the Clandestine Ditch of the Perus Cemetery, is always supported by certain ethical principles, specialized procedures, specific rites and meets certain collective values ​​and objectives - to guarantee the transition between life and death, to reaffirm social collectivities and to ensure the continuity of the presence and, at times, to clarify the history.

The new coronavirus now appears as a total enemy: it threatens the integrity of every human body, impacts entire national economies, alters each person's self-consciousness, endangers the continuity of life and societies that are known. For Cameroonian historian Achille Mbembe, the Covid-19 virus and pandemic enable us to renew our perception of putrescibility and to live "in the neighborhood of death itself", so that our exact social isolation is a policy of containment: it is, in the limit, our own notion of humanity that is at stake, again.

Around the world, for a long time, coexistence with clandestine ditches with missing politicians, conflicts and civil wars, burials without consent, massive exterminations - and, in the current covid-19 pandemic, health determinations that prevent mourning and political choices about who should live and who should die - cover the death of terror, and explain the ethical issues of dying and the policies of the living and the ways of producing death (s).

In this second edition of the Friday of the Month "In times of pandemic", we ask: What can experiences with the dead of Covid-19 reveal about the policies of the living, in their understanding of the body, death, life, mourning and memory? What is new and what is repeated in Covid-19, in the relationship between the living and their dead? And in general, who are the dead? What is there to say about our bodies? How do the political representatives of the dead act to defend their dignity?

with Denise Pimenta (PPGAS / USP) and João Felipe Gonçalves (USP)
mediation: Renato Sztutman (USP)
[live stream on Friday's YouTube channel] - https://bit.ly/sextadomes

In one of his recent texts on the Covid-19 pandemic, the philosopher Paul B. Preciado exhorts us, in his words, to “learn from the virus”, underlining how it reveals and reinforces “dominant forms of biopolitical and necropolitical management” of the population. Another philosopher, Ailton Krenak, summons us to postpone the end of the world, admitting nature as an “immense multitude of forms”, over which humanity, by placing itself as a “measure of things”, underestimates and runs over; “thousands of people who insist on staying out of this civilized dance, of technique, of planet control (...) are removed from the scene, due to epidemics, poverty, hunger, directed violence "(2019). Starting from these provocations, on the first Friday of the Month 2020 we want to think together from the figure of the virus, trying to deepen discussions about the social impacts of this specific pandemic and other epidemics, in addition to reflecting on the place of the notion of virus in contemporary social thought. In this virtual meeting between different anthropological perspectives, we intend to cross reflect on some of the key concepts and concepts of our discipline, such as: sociality, relationship, social markers of difference, body, substance, health e / disease, visible / invisible, human / non-human, power, politics, State. Thus, we seek to think: what effects can epidemics or the spread of diseases have in different social contexts? How does the figure of the virus, seen as a symptom of the “mode of governance of late liberalism” (Povinelli, 2016), agency past and future? How does it relate to state power and how does it design new grammars for the production of bodies? What place do these diseases occupy in the minds of the Amerindian peoples, who have for centuries overcome devastating scenarios of contact and contagion by non-indigenous diseases?

with Rosenilton Oliveira (FEUSP) and Hélio Menezes (PPGAS / USP)
Mediation: Terra Johari (USP)
Friday, October 18, 2019, 2pm

“What‘ black ’is this in black culture?” Asks Stuart Hall in a study on the presence of African cultural heritage in the transatlantic context. The debate around artistic and cultural productions and their respective producers gains emblematic contours when it comes to adjectivating them from toponymic (African, European, American, etc.) or ethnic-racial (black, indigenous, among others) markers.

In the Brazilian case, the controversy about the “afro” and the “Brazilian” is a dilemma that founds the nation, a process marked by an asymmetric dialogue between subjects and cultures. On the one hand, in the field of the arts, as anthropologist Hélio Menezes shows in the curatorship of the exhibition Histórias Afro-Atlântica (MASP / Instituto Tomie Ohtake), it was agreed to call “black art” that in which black bodies and people were represented, without the question of black authorship being on the agenda. In his master's dissertation, Menezes argues that the difficulties in conceptualizing this art and its different meanings, throughout the 20th century, are related to the ambiguities that inform race relations in Brazil. On the other hand, Rosenilton Oliveira, at the crossroads between discursive practices and political actions, demonstrates how the notions of “culture” and “black identity” assume ambiguous conceptions among the religious groups that make up the black movement in Brazil, so that the so-called “processes of reafricanization ”assume perspectives that are sometimes radically different, but which, paradoxically, allow consensus to be established in the public sphere.

This Friday of the month we want to reflect on the processes of (re / de) Africanization of art and culture produced in the American continent. We will think from two ethnographies produced at PPGAS / USP, “The color of faith: 'black identity' and religion”, thesis by Rosenilton Oliveira and “Between the visible and the hidden: the construction of the concept of Afro-Brazilian art”, dissertation by Hélio Menezes. With them, we want to ask ourselves: What are the challenges observed in the process of classifying artistic and cultural productions of African origin? What do the categories that name products and producers in the field of art and cultural identities reveal?

with Marco Tobón Ocampo (Unicamp) and Roberta Marcondes Costa (NEIP / USP)
Mediation: Arthur Fontgalant (PPGAS / USP)

Who owns the land? Who has the right to claim parts of it and the various beings that inhabit it? Who determines its distribution or division? ”Asks philosopher Achille Mbembe before a world that limits movement and reinforces borders. Borders increasingly become spaces for reinforcing and reproducing vulnerabilities, for imprisoning ideas and movements. But what are borders?

Among geopolitical and symbolic meanings, borders are commonly read as limits, boundaries, contiguous spaces. In addition to the demarcation of spatialities, the notion of frontier also produces and accentuates vulnerabilities, limits movements, encodes bodies and relationships, seeks to control becoming and intensities. The fact is that the notion of frontier has long moved anthropological thinking, in different forms and in different fields.

While the ethnographies produced in the so-called territorial “frontier regions” pursue this notion, demonstrating both their permeability through the transit of people and collectives and the contingency of relations between lands and their people, Anthropology itself is produced by producing its own borders, mobilizing objects and issues that stabilize and / or deconstruct theoretical, conceptual, methodological and disciplinary boundaries. If anthropological knowledge is inherently relational (Wagner, 1975), researchers' relations with other worlds make our discipline continually rethink and (re) invent its borders.

From gender studies to the Anthropology of the body and health; from scientific practices to native cosmopolitics, among other fields, Anthropology is faced with “frontier regions”, marked by codifications, movements, stabilizations and destabilizations. If anthropologies that attempted to identify boundaries between ethnic groups seem distant, the notion of boundary certainly does not seem to be an “endangered object” (Sahlins, 1997).

On the Friday of the month of September we want to think from the frontiers and we invite everyone, everyone and everyone to know some anthropological points of view around this notion, taking it as a datum of certain contexts of ethnographic research, as well as an object of conceptual reflection of our discipline.

with Alana Moraes (National Museum / UFRJ), Chirley Pankará (USP) and Jacqueline Moraes Teixeira (USP)
Mediation: Jesser Ramos (PPGAS / USP)

At the end of the semester, due to the strike and mobilizations in defense of science, public education and universities, the Sixth of the Month collective invites everyone to think about the challenges of doing anthropology at the moment we are living, in that Brazil is going through so many setbacks.

Under the title "Anthropology in times of catastrophe", we will start from political and ethnographic experiences to bring together the student body and reflect not only on the effects of the current moment on academic production in Anthropology, but especially on how collaborative trajectories between anthropologists and their partners , in different research contexts, can produce deviant (or creative) ways of challenging this reality - read by many as a catastrophe. As Isabelle Stengers proposes in the time of catastrophes, what must be done today is not only to question those responsible for the crises, but to “intervene”, that is, to ask questions, think about what should be done and for the possibility to exist of a future that is not barbaric, starting from struggles that are already underway.

Borrowing the idea of ​​"ethnographic pact", which Bruce Albert developed in his relationship with the Yanomami, we want to transform this Friday of the Month into an assembly, not only of researchers, but of perspectives around anthropological doing - and different experiences "ethnographic pact". In short, it is a methodological but also eminently political reflection.

From Jacqueline Teixeira we will hear about research with evangelical women at IURD; Alana Moraes will speak from the kitchens of the homeless occupations in the city of São Paulo; Chirley Pankará, in turn, brings contributions from indigenous collectives and schools, sharing reflections as a researcher, manager and parliamentarian; Jesser Ramos, mediator of the debate, offers us his experiences at Casa 1 - Center for Culture and LGBT Reception.

with Dibe Ayoub (National Museum / UFRJ) and Fabiana de Andrade (USP)
Mediation: Letizia Patriarca (PPGAS / USP)

In her celebrated study of gender problems, anthropologist Marilyn Strathern comes to the conclusion that, although the idea of ​​machismo is indebted to a Western epistemology, even in indigenous contexts, such as the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, women do not they are immune to acts of violence. Although analytical categories are constructed historically and contextually, as Strathern teaches, the drama of aggressions against women is persistent and continues to pose questions to anthropological discipline. After all, why, everywhere, women, trans and cisgender, continue to suffer violence? In Brazil, a woman is a victim of rape every nine minutes; three women are victims of femicide a day; every two days a transgender person is murdered; and every two minutes a woman registers an assault under the Maria da Penha law. This Friday of the month we invite everyone to think about this problem. From women who are abused in their most intimate relationships to mothers who practice acts of violence to protect their families and their lands, we will learn about ethnographies carried out in contexts marked by the narratives and perspectives of women themselves regarding violence.

with Andrea Barbosa (Unifesp) and Carolina Junqueira dos Santos (USP)
Mediation: João Campos (PPGAS / USP)

The image, as an object of anthropological thought, has long fueled reflections on its production, its status and its role in the production of knowledge in Human Sciences. Furthermore, it has provided a basis for theoretical and methodological debates, whether from other theories of image, or from the encounter between anthropological making and the production of films, photographs, paintings, drawings. In this * Friday of the Month *, we want to invite everyone to a debate on the power of images as ways of thinking the direction of our history, but also of translating other modes of existence from the imagery experience. It is, above all, the possibility of reconstructing peripheral narratives and creating images of the social that are sometimes erased from our memory. It is also a matter of discussing the political-epistemological implications of the use of images in and for anthropological production, collaboratively or not. Finally, it is also a matter of thinking through images, what they bring up, like threads of memory, what they transform with their circulation, of what they do.

With Bruna Franchetto (National Museum / UFRJ) and Majoi Gongora (CEstA / USP)
Mediation: Jaime Mayoruna (PPGAS / USP)

Marching through the streets of big cities, dancing at indigenous village parties or weeping sorrows in a country bar: the word in its sung expression makes the voice a vehicle for communication between worlds. Thinking about the power of transformation and creation of songs in different contexts, the Sixth of the Month invites us to reflect on different aspects of the sung word, its role in the production of people and collectives, its ability to connect visible and invisible spaces and its forms of transmission over time. Interface between music and verbal art, sound and meaning, the songs gain attention from Anthropology through a number of questions: What do the songs of an Amerindian shaman and an immigrant musician do? Who is sung and how are the words and melodies composed by singers composed? How do you learn to sing and how do repertoires circulate between different people and generations? How are chants able to cross and connect spaces and times, transformed or not by the use of registration and diffusion technologies? What is the role of Anthropology to highlight the ways in which different collectives give meaning to verbal arts, musical practices and singing?

With Vitor Grunvald (USP) and Julia Ruiz (ASA / USP)
Mediation: Priscila Almeida (PPGAS / USP)

Body, party, dance, voice, color, transformation. These could be keywords to describe the countless popular demonstrations that have taken over the streets in Brazil and in the world, especially in the last decade, and that make attention to the overlap between political action and expressive forms inescapable. Be in the powerful and colorful manifestations of LGBTI pride in big cities or marches against political figures and big corporations around the world, what these events show us is that there is no insurgency without gesture, without sound, without imagery.

Expressions like "my body is political" and "the boon is also a struggle" intensify connections between different signs and their capacity to produce new worlds, new ways of being in the world. Disputes over taxonomies and the meanings attributed to dissident, non-conforming or unwanted bodies go through capture processes that range from the reduction of the concept of gender to an ideology and even speeches by presidential candidates. Given these findings, the Friday of the Month of September - which occurs exceptionally in the first week of October - invites to think and discuss motivations, desires, as well as the potentialities and political effects of the arts and corporealities in popular upheavals, political acts, upheavals.

How are the relations between gender, art, ethnicity and sexuality expressed and experienced in these events or in everyday micropolitical experiences? How to think about the agentivity of expressive forms in the construction of bodies and collectives? How do they act in the construction of another policy? How can anthropology strengthen the debate about the transposition of boundaries between what is art and what is political action?