Clues to a Performative Cartography of the ‘New Right’ (2015-2019)

Abstract:

This paper aims to weave a reflection from the performativity setback, when charting the politics’ aestheticization and art’s politicization, produced from the rise of the new right in recent Brazil, permeating aspects of its performativity. In conclusion, it is discussed aspects concerning the carnivalization, from the joy’s strategies analyzed in Belo Horizonte and its street carnival. This is like an aesthetic-political glimpse amidst the new right’s ill-forgedbarrel of copies, characterized by the strategy of the hybrid war, a mark of History’s falsification, as tactics for geopolitical territory dispute.

Keywords:
Carnivalization; Performativity; Aestheticization of Politics; ‘New Right’

Resumo:

O trabalho busca tecer uma reflexão a partir do revés da performatividade, ao cartografar a estetização da política e a politização da arte, produzida a partir da ascensão da nova direita no Brasil recente, permeando aspectos de sua performatividade. Em conclusão, são discutidas questões adjacentes à carnavalização, a partir das estratégias da alegria, analisadas em Belo Horizonte e seu carnaval de rua, como vislumbre estético-político em meio ao barril de cópias mal forjadas da nova direita, caracterizada pela estratégia da guerra híbrida, marco da falsificação da história, como táticas para a disputa de território geopolítico.

Palavras-chave:
Carnavalização; Performatividade; Estetização da Política; ‘Nova Direita’

Résumé:

Ce travail fait une réflexion de l’échec de la performativité, dans la cartographie de l’esthétisation de la politique face la récent ascension de la ‘nouvelle droite’ au Brèsil, en se concentrant sur les aspects de sa performativité. Il met en évidence le cadre performatif de la falsification de l’histoire comme une tactique dans la dispute territoire géopolitique, au milieu d’une reproductibilité mal forgé de la ‘nouvelle droite’. En contrepoint à la performativité de ces mouvements émergents dans la sphère publique du pays à partir de 2013, les questions entourant le carnavalesque sont discutèes, depuis des stratégies de joie analysées à Belo Horizonte et son carnaval de rue.

Mots-clés:
Carnavalisation; Performativité; Esthétique de la Politique; ‘Nouvelle Droite’

A Kind of Prologue

1. 2015_ A group of about 50 people dressed in shirts printed with the Brazilian national flag dance together - in a rhythm similar to axé - the Seja Patriota’s tune choreography in São Paulo. In its YouTube tutorial, the anti-government group, Consciência Patriótica, teaches the choreography step by step, with the purpose of increasing, from the flash mob device, the pro-impeachment protests against President Dilma Rousseff.

2. 2015_ A 12-meter-high rubber yellow duck is inflated by the São Paulo Federation of Industries (FIESP), on Paulista Avenue in a protest against tax increase. Soon the same giant duck travels around the country in pro-impeachment demonstrations against former President Dilma with the slogan I won’t pay for the duck [I won’t pay the piper].

3. 2015_ A Facebook event named panelaço and tuitaço [pot banging and massive twitter messages] call up people to bang their home pots during the speech of former president Dilma Rousseff the 8^th of March. Additional panelaços are summoned during the speech of ministers and members linked to the Worker’s Party (PT) in national broadcast. Without leaving their homes, the protesters banged pots from their apartments, most of them living in pribe areas of the country’s major capitals (Mesmo..., 2015).

4. 2015_A woman puts two stickers on her breasts and takes off her shirt during a rally against Dilma Rousseff’s government on Paulista Avenue, standing half-naked in the middle of protesters and the police. Next, she continues her action screaming: “Dilma out! PT out! I want a better country, a country without corruption!”, while posing to the photographers. Juliana Isen, 36 years old, is from Bahia, well born and wants to be a TV host, inspired by the Brazilian TV host Hebe Camargo (A Peladona..., 2015).

5. 2015_The Altar’s Gladiators Army: “Wearing black and green uniforms, youngsters march in a room full of spectators. They form a line, make an army salute, shout slogans dictated by a leader and say they are ‘ready for battle’. The scene, reminding an army’s presentation, takes place during cults on the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. The young recruits are part of a project named ‘The Altar’s Gladiators’, launched in January with the intention of forming pastors all around Brazil and in the countries where the church has already spread its wings, such as Argentina and Colombia” (Jovens..., 2015, n. p.).

6. 2016_ Speech acts for yes in the voting of President Rousseff’s Impeachment in the National Congress: “For my country, for God, for my family, for the good people. My vote is yes! Out with Dilma, out with Lula, out with PT!” (Police chief Waldir, PR/GO); “May God have mercy of this nation” (Eduardo Cunha); “On this day of glory for the people, there is a man that will enter History. Congratulations, chamber president Eduardo Cunha. They have lost in 1964 and they lose now in 2016. For the family and the children’s innocence that PT has never respected, against communism, the Foro de São Paulo and in the memory of Colonel Brilhante Ulstra, my vote is yes” (Jair Bolsonaro, PSC/RJ); “With God’s help, for my family and for the Brazilian people, for the evangelicals of all nation, for the MBL’s boys, for Vem pra Rua, saying that Olavo is right, saying ‘goodbye dear’ and saying ‘goodbye PT’, this dark party, I vote yes!” (Marco Feliciano, PSC/SP); “Chairman president, for the Brazilian people hope’s rescue, for the reconstruction of our country, but, above all, in defense of life, family and faith, I vote yes” (Erivelton Santana, PEN/BA); “Mr. Chairman, for my family, my children, for the people of Rio de Janeiro e for Itaguaí’s population, orderly and hardworking people, I vote yes” (Alexandre Vale, PR/RJ); “Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, assemblymen, sometime ago this country chose the red flag, but saw that it was a mistake and wants the green-yellow back, order and progress. This people that is out there, did not come from Venezuela, did not come from North Korea. I’d like here, on behalf of my family, on behalf of the northwest region of the state of São Paulo, in my hometown’s name, I’d like to vote yes and to register that William Woo, who is my deputy, if he were here, he would also vote yes, for a stronger Brazil, an independent Brazil, a Brazil without corruption” (Fausto Pinato, PP/SP); “Mr. Chairman, for the thousands of miners who trusted me with their representation here in this House, miners from my dear Divinópolis; miners from my hometown, Nova Serrana; from Formiga; from Arcos; for the people of Belo Horizonte; I expect, Mr. Chairman, that this is the beginning of an ethical agenda, that will bring to the public affairs the decency and the morality back; for my family, for my children, for my wife, for my granddaughter, for my father, absent today, but always present in my life, for my mother, Maria, who taught me the values that guide my public life, for my brothers, I vote yes, Mr. Chairman” (Jaime Martins, PSD/MG); “Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord! In defense of life, of family, moral and good manners, against corruption and never giving up Brazil, my vote is yes” (Pastor Eurico, PHS/PE); “Mr. Chairman, without fear of having hope and with the assurance that the Federal Constitution supports this session; for the Brazilian people; for Brasília DF; for the evangelical and Christian nation and for the peace in Jerusalem, I vote yes” (Ronaldo Fonseca, PROS/DF); “Mr. Chairman, for the values that I inherited from my parents and that I try to pass to my children; for the gratitude I have to the Catholic Charismatic Renovation, to Canção Nova and other movements that helped me to get rid of drugs; for the millions of Brazilians who depend on drugs and cannot get help; to honor the people of Belo Horizonte, of Minas Gerais state, the Brazilians in this Land of the Holy Cross, my vote is yes. And the vote of my deputy, Euclides, would also be yes, Mr. Chairman” (Eros Biondini, PROS/MG; “Glory to God! Mr. Chairman, all the presents here have heard me say ‘Dilma out!’, ‘Michel Temer out!’, ‘Eduardo Cunha out!’, ‘Rede Globo out’, a liar that slander people. You may be big to the eyes of men, but, to God, you are pretty small. On behalf of our Lord Jesus, I prophesy your fall starting today. And I come here to say, on behalf of the armed forces that have been messed up for years, for the public security’s military who are dying every day, for the military that are now inactive and pensioners, without a salary, ‘Pezão out!’, ‘Dornelles out!’. Enough with corruption! My vote is yes. Praise the Lord! Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord” (Cabo Daciolo, PTdoB/RJ); “Mr. Chairman, I was elected by the people of the state of Paraná who believe on the recovery of morality in politics. I was elected by the project of faith and politics of the Catholic Charismatic Renovation from my state, Paraná. For my family, for my daughter, for my wife, for the Paraná’s people, I’m proud to say: Lava Jato’s land, onward! Federal Police! Yes to the impeachment” (Diego Garcia, PHS/PR); “Representatives, Mr. Chairman, fellow Brazilians, first I would like to thank God for the opportunity of being elected by the lovable and wonderful state of Minas Gerais. A person whom I admire a lot was born in this state, the apostle Valdemiro Santiago, and that wonderful Church that helped me in this work. I also want to thank my wife, my daughter, who have been giving me a great deal of strength; to my mother; to my aunt Eurides, who took care of me when I was a child; to my aunt Geo, who taught me manners. I want to thank the Brazilian people and make a statement, right now, against corruption, against robbery, against trickery. I have always fought for new elections. In this moment, so that the Brazilians have a new hope of better days, of prosperity, I vote yes” (Franklin Lima, PP/MG) (Prandi; Carneiro, 2018).

7. 2016_Jair Bolsonaro is baptized on Jordan River. Act of speech: “Through your public confession, I baptize you on behalf of the Father, the Son and the Holly Ghost” + Performative act: “As the Senate was on fire with president Rousseff impeachment’s vote, federal congressman Jair Bolsonaro (PSC) dived in the wtares of the Jordan River in northeast Israel. Staunch opponent of Rousseff, he was baptized this Wednesday. His press office confirmed the religious ceremony’s celebration. Bolsonaro’s baptism images were shared on social networks” (Enquanto..., 2016, n. p.).

8. 2017_QUEERMUSEU: “NOTE ABOUT THE QUEERMUSEU EXHIBITION: In the last days, we received several critic protests concerning the Queermuseu exhibition - Cartographies of difference in the Brazilian Art. We sincerely apologize to all who felt offended by any work of art that made part of the show. The goal of Santander Cultural is to encourage art and promote the debate around the big issues of the contemporary world, not to generate any kind of disrespect and discord. Our role, as a cultural space, is to highlight the work of Brazilian curators and artists to generate reflection. We have always managed to do that without interfering on the content to preserve the author’s independence, and that has been the most effective way to bring to the public an innovative and quality work. This time, however, we heard the manifestations and we understood that some of the works of the Queermuseu exhibition disrespected symbols, creeds and people, the kind of things that are not tuned with our prospect. When art is not capable of generate inclusion and positive reflection, it loses its higher purpose, which is to elevate the human condition. Santander Cultural does not corroborate a specific kind of art, but art in its plurality, grounded on the deep respect we have for each individual. For this reason, we have decided to close the show this Sunday, 9^th of September. We guarantee, however, that we remain committed to promoting the debate on diversity and other major contemporary issues” (Santander Cultural, 2017, n. p.).

9. 2017_ A group of about 30 people protest in front of the Arts Palace singing the National Anthem, gospel songs and chanting slogans. Next, they try to break into the exhibition featuring paintings by artist Pedro Moraleida, who died in 1999. The group is led by Pastor Leonardo Alvim de Melo, who opposes to the exhibition of Moraleida’s work stating: “This movement is contrary to the so-called modern art. What is inside can be said to be art, because it is painting, but what is exhibited there is pedophilia, zoophilia and christophobia” (Mello, 2017, n. p.).

10. 2018_ ‘I am a Bolsonaro’s robot’. A line of people slowly walks towards a camera making robotized gestures. They call themselves ‘Bolsonaro’s robots’, after Veja magazine article stated that the then candidate had become a giant in the digital universe through boots and fake profiles. The robots came out of the closet.

11. 2018_ “Are you left or right?” Dressed all in white, except for an unusual pair of black gloves, the pastor makes the question to the spirit that holds of a woman. It is a fussy soul. Under its influence, the woman laughs, shrieks, and whips around. ‘I’m left!’, answers the entity, by the mouth of the possessed. Soon after, the pastor warns that he will promote a ‘side changing’. Or rather: he will expel the ‘left’ spirit out of the woman’s body to allow the forces of the right to comfort her. He then presents a mural that is divided into two parts. One gathers only negative words: discouragement, hatred, bad luck, quarrels, addictions, anguish, misery, depression, fear… These are the evils reserved to those who let themselves being bewitched by supernatural left-wing creatures. But those who surrender to the ‘right-wing band’ only enjoy boons, as the other part of the mural shows: prosperity, love, health, relief, courage, enthusiasm, vigor, self-control, justice…” (Antenore, 2018, n. p.).

12. 2018_ Presidential Candidate Cabo Daciolo climbs a hill during the elections for praying and fasting, because he believes that there is a spiritual war going on in Brazil. With his daughter’s tablet, he records videos at Monte das Oliveiras, in Campo Grande’s neighborhood, west region of Rio de Janeiro city. In an excerpt from a video, the candidate states: “These men want to perpetuate themselves in power, they run over whoever is ahead of them.” In another of his videos, Cabo Daciolo plays a horn at the top of the mount after calling the people to call on the Lord.

13. 2018_Wilson Witzel (PSC), Daniel Silveira (PSL) and Rodrigo Amorim (PSL) break the Rio de Janeiro city’s street sign named after the councilwoman from PSOL/RJ, Marielle Franco, in an live broadcasted video on Facebook that took place at an event promoted on the Serrana region of Rio de Janeiro, during Witzel’s speech. Marielle was killed in 2017, shot to death along with Anderson Pedro Gomes, the driver of the car she was in. The crime has not been closed until now.

14. ‘I know Brazil is not a lightweight,’ said Silvio Santos, during the call made by President-elect Jair Bolsonaro live broadcast during Teleton, a program Santos has been hosting for decades and raising money for the Association for Disabled Children. The president ‘surprised’ the host and owner of SBT television channel on this intervention to make a donation and ask to his electors - and his opponents - to make donations to the cause. Bolsonaro’s image was projected in the background, occupying all the entire frame. Silvio, after giving him praises, predicted: ‘I think that you can stay for eight years and after, Moro takes your place and stays for another eight years’.

Introduction

This small cutout of discursive enunciations, spectacular actions and media gestures has been shaping the recent history of Brazil, weaving - albeit in a divergent way among its social actors - a considerable part of the political narratives and, therefore, of the minds and current political imagination. This cartographic cutout is part of the conclusions of my doctoral dissertation, presented in 2019, at the School of Fine Arts of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, entitled The deepest is the party, in which, from a local performative event, Praia da Estação, ritualized in Belo Horizonte since 2010, I set out to follow what, borrowing the term used by Peter Pál Pelbart (2016), I called taking the lid of the aesthetic-political imaginary in the city, influenced by Bakhtin’s idea of carnivalization (1987).

The deepest is the party is a dissertation on art and politics, as well as on tensions between official and unofficial culture in Bakhtin, mixed in the light of contemporary thinking, especially the French thought, of various philosophical matrices. However, the political crossings, both nationally and globally after 2013, made me think of the setback of performative, carnivalization and updating of the relations between aesthetics and politics, without any intention of establishing an idea of truth, but still as part of the cartographic process.

The period from 2013 to 2019 has been permeated by many political changes in Brazil, but also evidenced around the world. There is a growing emergence of the right-wing discourse, partly due to the state of economic crisis and political representation, which has been increasingly visible and, above all, the aesthetic-political incorporation of iteration (Derrida, 1991), which brings us to its performative character, its most visible and disseminating aspect.

In this paper, I will approach the iterations of gestures, performative speech acts, spectacular apparatuses, together with the discussion presented by Walter Benjamin (2006) about the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of art in the face of fascism. This is to elaborate considerations about the performativity of the new right, as some theorists have called the complex ultra-right insurgency with fundamentalist tendencies in dispute over narratives in present Brazil.

To do so, it was necessary to permeate what has been discussed in the political sciences’ debate, and the arduous attempts to cut under the term new right, in order to think of its obsolescence, given the cumulative and even vague temporality, when thinking about it in long term.

Thus, I present a brief study, from the article A Nova Direita no Brasil: contexto e matrizes conceituais, in which the author Vera Alves Cepêda (2018)⁷ analyzes the idea of a new right, weaving an analysis from the text Por que virei à direita: três intelectuais explicam sua opção pelo conservadorismo, published in 2012 (Coutinho; Pondé; Rosenfield, 2012).

Performativity is placed in a chiaroscuro game with carnivalization, so that the setbacks about the aesthetic intentions produced in cartography at the beginning of this article are postulated, such as the decontextualized appropriations, taken from other ideological or artistic matrices, producing the effect of copying.

In conclusion, it is possible to observe that the enunciations are less and less concerned with the idea of neutrality as there was in the old right and, therefore, they acquire more outlined and spectacular contours, gestures and voices with stronger tones, self-referential media apparatuses, as seen in the pronouncements via Facebook and statements based on Twitter, without the apparent direct mediation of traditional media, generating a sense of closeness and representation breakdown with the public.

A Cabinet with Many Shelves: the new right

In the last decade, much has been written about the new right, debated in this work at national level, without losing sight of the fact that it is a global phenomenon in which various forms of emergence and engagement are postulated. Whether in defense, in a conservative self-referential field, or as a critical object of analysis by authors from the progressive field. There is a disputed territory and the endeavor of the researchers has been arduous, being a complex term about a recent and rising phenomenon.

According to researcher Vera Alves Cepêda (2018), author of the text Nova Direita no Brasil: contexto e matrizes conceituais, there are three important problems for apprehension and analysis in the conceptual field of the issue:

[...] the first, on the ideological boundaries that would delimit the field of the right, establishing the beacons of its theoretical or programmatic identity; the second, about the temporal limits that would allow the adoption of the term new right, with characteristics that would support a different arrangement from what was concerted in previous moments; the third, originated in the recognition that, although the conservative moment of recent years is internationally expressive, it varies according to national configurations, interacting with specific social and historical contexts where the new right takes on its own color - requiring the investigation of identity elements while, at the same time, adjusting to specific national policy trajectories (Cepêda, 2018, p. 41).

Like Cêpeda in her article, I do not seek to define or dispute the narrative about what would the new right be, but to choose some clues for a possible clipping as a basis for understanding what I explore in this text, to provide substrate for the notes on its performative axis.

The author looked at academic texts that seek understanding the current rightist and conservative field, as well as examined the arguments of the manifesto Por que virei à direita, published in 2012 by Portuguese-speaking intellectuals, in which the authors justify why they have turned to conservatism.

The author’s choice to analyze such a manifesto is partly justified because it is temporally symptomatic, since in 2013 there was a reactive framework that has been issuing new discursive and performative repositioning between the right fields - about a year after the manifesto was published. By reading the manifesto, it is possible to touch on the discursive structures that had been engendered, as a refusal of the developmentist period of the previous PT governments, and the return to the principles of inequality’s naturalization, the watershed between the ideological fields.

If there is a broad idea between the right/left binomials, it must be stressed that their conception is relational, as pointed out by Norberto Bobbio (1995) in the text Direita e Esquerda - razões e significados de uma distinção política, in which central axes are articulated by the founding differences of conception, such as equality, inequality and freedom, among other schematic frameworks of his analysis, such as democracy, authoritarianism and totalitarianism, which become even more complex.

However, Cepêda points to the most basic focus on Bobbio’s theory, based on the equality/inequality binomial to also develop her theory on the intensification and dispute of ideological fields and their updates. Basically, Bobbio points to historical conceptions about such a binomial for the axiomatic formation of his ideas, postulating that the right would understand inequality as a natural order and the borderline of all political action, and the left, on the other hand, would act by the desire of overcoming this naturalization in order to seek equality.

Within the right’s field, the radical variants of Nazism, fascism and reactionarism as conservative models, and the progressive models seen in classical liberalism are postulated. Cepêda (2018, p. 44) points out that, among such fields, countless currents coexist, and again reaffirms, from her reading of Bobbio, the common denominator of naturalization (defense and acceptance) of the unequal access to resources and political powers.

The author finds in Michael Löwy’s (2015) work some clues to the updates and overlaps of layers in far-right thinking from the perspective of radicalizing the discourses of “nationalism, anti-globalism, xenophobia, explicit racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric, Islamophobia, belligerence and intolerance “(Cepêda, 2018, p. 46) in several different national groups, but especially in Europe, since the author makes few comments about Latin American countries⁸. For Löwy, since the disasters of the 1930s, no expressions as powerfully associated with fascism had been detected as they are today:

Löwy looks closer to the European scene, recognizing that he has no qualified information to analyze the Latin American case, although extreme right-wing differential manifestations also occur on this continent. Over Europe a myriad of combinations of variables were lined up, bundled in countries with the presence of party organizations with fascist and/or neo-Nazi, semi fascist or far right character. The most common and ordering variables are nationalism, anti-globalism, xenophobia, explicit racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric, Islamophobia, belligerence, and intolerance. They also vary in the perception of the disruptions of capitalism, in the anti-systemic or institutional character, in the aversion to communism and in the selection of the enemy - internal and external. Löwy’s work establishes the correlation between right (extreme) and the ideological basis of fascism, updating its nexus and meaning (Cepêda, 2018, p. 46).

The author observes the difficulty in establishing such frames on the right-wing in Brazil, in which there seems to be a miscegenation between ideological patterns⁹ as they do not necessarily have a coherence of affiliation between them, oscillating between the dissonance of such undercurrents in the right field, to consonances and nebulous pacts, such as those established between the politics of faith, conservatism and neoliberalism, further complexifying the context for analysis in the national field.

However, she points to an understanding from the glimpse of the common enemy, constituting such alliances and articulations of forces so disparate at first glance. Cepêda reaffirms that if the right has come out of the closet, as is repeated by the field on the left, it must be understood that it is a closet with many shelves, “[...] where heteroclitic political projects, intentions, values and conceptions rest. The term ‘new’ expresses a new scenario, targets and means of action, such as the multiplication of instruments of political struggle” (Cepêda, 2018, p. 52).

From the article A nova direita brasileira: ideias, retórica e prática política, by Jorge Chaloub and Fernando Perlatto, published in 2016, Cepêda comments on the six hypotheses for understanding the rise of new right thinking in the country, as follows:

1. coherence with the international scenario, understanding the new right as a worldwide phenomenon; 2. The distancing from the epochal moment of dictatorship, which obliterates and distorts the clear perception of the risks and vices of authoritarianism implanted since 1964 (just as, I believe, a whole generation has not even lived with the process of redemocratization, having an experience accommodated within the protective limits of a rule of law); 3. The technological and functional changes of the cultural industry (which I think made possible the rapid expansion of the hybrid war pattern); 4. The creation of an institutionalized locus for the production and diffusion of liberal or right-wing thinking; 5. The emergence of leftist governments in the country, including their successes and failures, capable of generating polarization; and, 6. The crisis of the party system (and which we can extend to the crisis of the pattern of democratic representation and the emergence of demo phobic manifestations and hatred of democracy) (Cepêda, 2018, p. 51).

However, above all, what characterizes the new intifada of the Brazilian and international right is the use of hybrid warfare, in which history and political narratives are questioned due to the wide spread of fake news, one of the political strategies used in several communication platforms, especially on social networks, including opinion makers, intellectuals, big media, and shady pacts with big corporations, like Cambridge Analytica, a data mining company that sells strategic information to the right-wing political field.

The Performative Varnish of the New Right

Urban interventions, speech acts, flash mobs and collective performances, such as those mentioned above, are aesthetic resources used, before and after the 2016 juridical-mediatic coup in Brazil, to focus and propagate the viewpoint with neoliberal tendency, with layers of religious fundamentalism and militarism linked to the unstructured past of dictatorship.

The shadow of the aestheticization of politics, to which Walter Benjamin (2006) warned when analyzing the gestures and the aesthetic construction of fascism, especially from the theological point of view, as Benjamin ventures, returns updated to our eyes in the South in times of a growing discourse of hatred against minorities, supported by the sacred scriptures and now legitimized as an agenda of an elected government in Brazil.

Benjamin’s thought, articulated between Marxism and Jewish theology to “[...] mobilize into the revolution the energies of inebriation” (Benjamin, 1994), by blending Historical Materialism and the Mystic, produced the idea of “messianic interruption” that permeated all his work. Benjamin warned there about interrupting, exploding the continuum of history: “Before the spark reaches dynamite, the burning fuse must be cut” (Benjamin, 1994, p. 46) - about the need for the elimination of the bourgeoisie.

Benjamin (2006) makes use of the causal relationship between economy and culture referred by Marx in order to establish a relationship not of economic genesis of culture, but to think about the expression of economy in culture, that is, its expressive correlation.

In The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction - a materialist work about changes in the conditions of production and their impact on culture, more specifically on art technique - Benjamin (1994, p. 171) analyzes the shifts of techné to the valuation of the gaze, to new ways of making and reproducing the works. The advent of photography would eventually lead to the loss of the “originality of the work of art”, which he called “aura”, this sense of the time of production of the work as a ritualistic dimension, in which an “authentic” production is directly linked to the theological phenomenon, as in Classical Antiquity.

With the new possibilities of reproduction and technological resources, the paradigms on the social function of art are changed. Art, losing its originality, that is linked to a ritual time, as in painting, for Benjamin is now grounded on political praxis (1994, p. 172).

Benjamin’s idea to tackle the aestheticization of politics, conducted by the spectacle of fascism, was the politicization of art through the socialist revolution, a logic of desecration of the work of art and also the democratization of access and production, as in photography and in the cinema.

Instead, the philosopher analyzes the strategies of film and photography, appropriated as propaganda devices of fascist ideas for the control of the masses, but also as a place of false and rapid identification, where the mass sees its own face, or what is supposed as such, for then being satisfied with the aesthetic participation in the political game of fascism.

This is possible to the extent that fascism organizes the proletarian masses without touching the relations between production and property, enabling such masses to meet the need to express themselves through the processes of identification, unchanging the status quo: “[...] what goes for the cinematographic capital goes for fascism in general: it secretly exploits, in the interests of a minority of owners, the unwavering aspiration for new social conditions” (Benjamin, 1994, p. 185).

In this set of mirrors, Benjamin has a perspective on the mass as the cheated people, and this way, the politicization of aesthetics, as a means of desecrating art, would be a possible answer to break with the logic of fascist aesthetic-political manipulation, breaking with the cynicism of the spectacle presented. On the aestheticization of raw political power and the Benjaminian perception of the mass, Habermas (1980, p. 175) comments:

There is no doubt that Benjamin, like Marcuse, sees in the mass art of fascism, which arises with the pretension of being political, the danger of a false dissolution of autonomous art. This Nazi propagandistic art effectively liquidates art as an autonomous sphere, but behind the veil of politicization it is actually at the service of the aestheticization of raw political power. It replaces the cult value of bourgeois art with the value produced through mere manipulation. Religious fascination is broken only to be synthetically renewed: mass reception becomes mass suggestion.

If, in The Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari (1972, p. 47) quote Wilhelm Reich to point out that the masses were not entirely deceived, but that at some point in history they desired fascism, it is because there is an implication of the forces in contradiction about the perversion in the field of desire, beyond the materialistic reasons that led to the state of barbarism, in the Reichean perspective. But it would be difficult to deny any active participation by the masses, this complex concept in itself, in the fascist libido, or even in the fascination on barbarism, taking the risk of emptying, even by the idea of alienation, the complexity of historical and social contradictions and even its contemporary repetition.

If, on the other hand, Adorno (Adorno apud Habermas, 1980) warned about the dangers of transcending a given esoteric art, which tries to bring art and life closer, by thinking about the degenerating effect of art and its total vulgarization in the face of simplistic commercial imitation, this also returns to the performative of language, since its mimesis, myriad for an art of the future, holds the pretense of autonomous art, beyond aesthetic rationality.

Habermas (1980) does not effectively position himself between Benjamin and Adorno, and it is possible to cohabit Benjamin’s attempt to situate art closer to the world and life, against the notion of esoteric and transcendental art, just as in Adorno a mediation would be possible between mimesis and the everyday world, in order to maintain autonomy and rationality, so dear to Adorno.

What juxtaposes both intentions is performativity, whether or not it contains the actual political discourse in evidence, whether in banners, posters, body writings, social media texts, etc. The experience is lived repeatedly each year, in order to share and multiply such aesthetic suspensions of the world - this other world in it - to be diluted between parties, artistic productions, performative games, collective performances of every kind, every day of the year. But its revitalizing force seems to be updated during the carnival celebration, as a pact that renews and multiplies this collective performance.

To this impasse between the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of art, expanding here to the level of aesthetics, Marcuse seems to point to the distancing of the politicization discourse in art as a way of leaving space for something revolutionary to happen in language in his equation: “The more immediately political the artwork, the more it reduces the power of remoteness and the radical and transcendent goals of change. In this sense, there may be more subversive potential in Baudelaire and Rimbaud’s poetry than in Brecht’s didactic plays” (Marcuse, 1999, p. 14).

I do not intend to settle the equation between the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of art in order to simplify its edges, but to do the exercise of distancing to which Zízek (2011, n. p.) called, so as not to fall into narcissistic love about the aesthetic-political operations permeated here, as they are so intimate that invite us to fall in love with ourselves.

The performativity of the new right has been iterating over the originality of its trunk of ill-forged copies, but because of the shadow they produce, it is possible that, being so close, the questions between aestheticization of politics and politicization of art are updated reflexively, albeit inconclusively. Given the heat of the moment, it would be difficult to predict, despite the historical winds of repetition, where and how difference manifests itself in the tragic political Brazilian scenario, where there would be difference in repetition.

On Performativity

‘The defendant is found guilty’, ‘I declare you husband and wife’, ‘the hunting season is open’, ‘I baptize you on behalf of the father...’, are some of the possible performative statements that the philosopher of language John Langshaw Austin called speech acts. In his text How to do things with words, written in the 1950s, he shook some paradigms of language theory in analytic philosophy, arguing that such statements perform, that is, act for themselves, is to do something with the word, make the word act.

The performative statements are not intended for description, observation, narration, dialogue, although they may take the form of a typical indicative sentence, but, moreover, not only do they perform actions that arise to the detriment of what the author calls “speech acts” (Austin, 1976, p. 40).

They are not based on the true or false binomial, they have no real value, so if successful, Austin calls them happy and, on the contrary, unhappy. As if, in a promise, the act of promising is a performatively happy statement in case the promise is fulfilled, and unhappy, in case it is not, not mattering the truth in the act of speech, but the power of action of the statement itself.

Thus, the performative statement becomes a pragmatic function of language and does not end in the sense of representation, much less sets the theory of communication in metaphysical abstractions. The question is brought to contextual data of statements, in order to reflect about the philosophical implication from abstract ethics, to discuss the issue of the responsibility for action, so:

Austin’s theory explains the ethical dimension of language, because it leads to the ultimate consequences the identity between do and say and insists on the presence of the language and accepts no separation between description and action. There is no difference between saying and the practiced action (Pinto, 2011, p. 21).

From this, it would be possible to situate, in actual situations and generally given as official, that bodies and contexts determine the speech acts, not putting the language apart of the world, inserting, thus, space for thinking about identity, power, place of speech and performativity in a wider way. For Erika-Fischer Lichte (2011, p. 148):

Publishing this information has changed the world. Statements of this kind not only say something, but perform exactly the action they express, that is, they are self-referential because they give meaning to what they do, and they are constitutive of reality because they create the reality they express. It is these two characteristics that distinguish performative statements. What people who are fluent in different languages have always known and practiced intuitively was developed for the first time, the philosophy of language: it had the potential to change and transform the world (our translation)¹⁰.

Therefore, performativity as language is also implicated in the autonomy of action over the description, it does not come to describe something beyond or prior to it. Although in the game there is some intention of representation, as said, it is in the action between the bodies and places that it takes place, in the actual present of the action.

The strength of performative speech acts, ‘For my country, for God, for my family, for the good people. My vote is yes!’, together with the shock emotions of the performances, as in the Jordan River baptism ritual, confirm a meticulous spectacle of performative iterability gestures (Derrida, 1991). As well as the military saluting, the two-fingered gun and the military push-ups, the axé choreographies, the banging of pots, a gesture linked to the historical resistance against the dictatorships in the Americas, which has its meaning displaced, the urban intervention of FIESP ducks giving a significant popularized in the preparation of the Impeachment, the army of organized and choreographed pastors within the Church, among countless repetitions that form an imaginary that calls the masses to identify and perform together.

It would be naive to say that there is not there, again, the aestheticization of politics working at full speed, but also the politicization of aesthetics and even art, when the aesthetic codes are reversed according to a reactionary discourse in order to produce signs of identification, made possible by the media and daily repetition, with spectacular effects. As in the case of FIESP’s duck urban intervention, in which the Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman complained of having his work plagiarized, as it was the same product.

The repetition of leftist aesthetic-political codes, which were appropriated by reactionary bias, as in the banging of pots, as well as the repeated military actions, such as the military saluting, the push-ups and guns reproduced with the hand, are readily absorbed and replicated, and are building a rapid ideological identification, beyond what was initially created.

These iteration gestures are present in every language, whether written or spoken, and presuppose a “minimal remnant” (Derrida, 1991), something that survives as ruin, so that it is identifiable and repeatable. Iterability is the almost concept that accompanies the one of performativity in Derrida’s theory. In his words: “Iterability presupposes a minimal remnant (such as a minimal though limited idealization), so that its identity is repeatable and identifiable in, through and even in view of change. Because the structure of the iteration, another decisive trait, implies both identity and difference” (Derrida, 1991, p. 76-77).

There is nothing new being created in the political aestheticization of the new reactionary times in Brazil, but recombination from spectacularly iterated appropriations to produce repeatable and easily identifiable identities through such gestures and images. The frame, the media framing devices are new parameters¹¹, by associating the truth to the primary sources, the representations of the self, remove from the scene the mediation of media.

The framing is given by the political actors themselves, and by the daily aspect that social networks provide, apparently without mediations, which allow the sensation of proximity and the breaking of the representation of the officiality, something like the breaking of the fourth wall in the theater, when the actor speaks directly to the audience, breaking the classic conventions of verisimilitude.

Through this close relationship, made possible by live broadcasts on social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Instagram and the tweet exchanges, mechanisms popularly used nowadays, it is produced an effect of horizontality, although emptied, proper to the idea of direct democracy, also provided by the time of simultaneous transmission.

This way, the public not only seems to feel closer to political actors, but also active participants in their decisions or controversies and become more vulnerable to the spread of fake news, as seen in the underworld currents of WhatsApp¹², a social networks which surreptitiously impacted the process of the last elections in the country, in 2018, since there is no regulation of what is shared.

An example of this phenomenon occurred in the recent inauguration of the present President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, in his first official appearance after being elected, when he made his announcement via Facebook, without the presence of the official press, which is not usual in the presidential pronouncements. It was the first time that access was denied to the press and this has been repeated over and over, as in the recent refusal to the press conference in Davos, Switzerland.

In this process, performativity is produced in the revolutionary setback, from the rapid identification of its signs and gestures, and, thus, leads to the sense of belonging to the faceless of history, a sensation so absent in times of crisis of aesthetic-political representation. Nothing is more dangerous in the repetition of history than to make possible to belong, through signs, images and gestures, to those who, in the middle of crisis, little can express beyond the reaction to condemn the generic other, also precarious, for their own precariousness, far from sharing the notion of precariousness that Butler (2018) assessed, in order to act jointly for the common good, as pointed out by Peter Pál Pelbart (2003).

To the success of their performances, the media, juridical, legislative, religious, military and transnational imperialists apparatuses are also shareholders, most of what sets the official power to which Bakhtin referred and structurally operate the seriousness as a way to neutralize the ideological actionism endeavored.

Is Joy the Final Proof?

If everything is repetition, Oswald de Andrade in his manifest reminds us that joy is the final proof. If joy is the final proof, it is because, unlike the capitalist byproduct of happiness, it cannot be fabricated officially, if we agree with Bakhtin. Joy is the affirmative pole of carnivalization, it is what gives its utopian meaning. When it is lost, it becomes merely a passive joy, as in Spinoza, fed by sad passions, it risks degenerating and losing itself in the seas of shock-emotions, such as terror and euphoria.

Accompanied by the loss of the affirmative pole, given joy as a regenerating complex, its link with the popular is also lost, conforming to the officiality, that is, the loss of its immanent dimension, which, it could be concluded, is born precisely by the negotiation that gives path to the tragic, which does not try to organize, control, shape, nationalize, privatize it. About the impoverishment of carnivalization, Bakhtin (1987, p. 30) states:

At this time (more precisely, since the second half of the 17^th century), there is a process of progressive reduction, falsification and impoverishment of the forms of popular carnival rites and spectacles. On the one hand, there is a nationalization of the festive life that becomes a life of apparatus; on the other hand, the party is introduced into daily life, that is, it is relegated to private, domestic and family life. The former privileges of the public square in celebration are being increasingly restricted. The particular vision of the carnival world, with its universalism, its boldness, its utopian character and its orientation towards the future, begins to turn into a simple festive mood. The party almost ceases to be the people’s second life, its temporary rebirth and renewal (emphasis added by the author).

The tragic is immanent, because it is also popular, in the sense of the crowds and the force of conflict between desire and power, between the cruelty of the party and the structuring of everyday time, because it connects with the forces of life and does not deny death forces, because it plays performatively as it does not hide its strategies. Rosset, Nietzsche’s assiduous reader, calls this tragic joy paradoxical joy, a contradicted joy, in contradiction with itself. So, he states:

It is not surprising that I prefer the second term of the alternative, persuaded not only that joy can accommodate itself to the tragic, but, above all, that it consists only in this and by this agreement with it. For precisely the privilege of joy and the reason for singular contentment, because the only one who has no reservations, remains at the same time perfectly conscious and perfectly indifferent about the misfortunes that make up existence. This indifference to unhappiness does not mean that joy is inattentive to it, even if it intends to ignore it, but rather that it is imminently attentive, the first interested and the first concerned; this is precisely because of its approving power that allows it to know unhappiness better and better than anyone else. That is why I will say in a word that there is joy only if it is both contradicted and in contradiction with itself: joy is paradoxical or it is not joy (Rosset, 2000, p. 25).

The paradoxical joy is the final proof, if we are confused among the museum of copies, because it presupposes the loss, and, as in carnivalizing parties, says more about spending that about the gain. It does not want to make the tragic the source of fear to discipline, to separate, to dissuade, to win votes, believers or soldiers, to give order and progress, no more than necessary. “Die only the necessary”, the poet reminded us¹³.

The paradoxical joy is not performed to cause the spectacle, but neither is it necessarily didactic, and although utopian, as proper of carnivalization, it is not limited to the projects of revolutions, because it still remains somewhat savage, which makes the work of base difficult.

Paradoxical joy is the final proof because it is of the order of expenditure. It is known that it loses, but remains joyful, as if celebrating the tragic, the irreducible human dimension of time and chance. To rejoice, even knowing the tragic dimension, would be not to be afraid of the incalculable, so the joy in Bakhtin, as a carnivalesque passion, is a popular joy, because it is not contained in the desire for official order. And to this celebrated expense is impossible to be understood by the profit officers, in their obscurantist policies; see the hybrid war, crusading against history.

Carnival for a Solar Policy

In his work Carnavais, Malandros e Heróis, the Brazilian anthropologist Roberto Damatta, based on a sociological interpretation that seeks to understand what makes brazil to become Brazil, is guided by the analysis of almost archetypal social characters and, in his view, dialectics - as Rascals and Heroes - to see the totality of the Brazilians as a drama to be unraveled (Damatta, 1997, p.15), having as its main motivator, for this endeavor, what he calls the “Brazilian dilemma”. To understand this dilemma, he uses some peculiarities of the Brazilian society, such as the squares and forecourt given by carnivals, as meeting and mediation areas [...] where,

Time is suspended and a new routine must be repeated or innovated, where problems are forgotten or faced; because here - suspended between the automatic routine and the party that rebuilds the world - we touch the kingdom and the essential human. It is in these regions that the power of the system is reborn, but it is also here that hope can be forged to see the world upside down (Damatta, 1997, p. 18).

This denial of time - an essential characteristic for understanding carnival as a ritual - in Damatta’s view reveals an eternal ideal of the Brazilian, which, by forging the hope of seeing the world upside down, accentuates his idealized value system even more rooted and unattainable. For the author, “[...] it is the ritual that allows one to become aware of certain deeper social crystallizations that society itself wishes to situate as part of its eternal ideals” (Damatta, 1997, p. 29).

All of this highlights the importance of understanding popular carnival, and the possible carnivalization (such as rogues, protests ...), which, in a deeper sense, expose us to the most emblematic fractures as a society, as a collective, says about the tensions between what we want to be and what we present ourselves to be.

The carnival ritual, which - like a huge archetypal and allegorical mirror of the deepest and most profound desires - shows the absence of a daily life that mediates these zones of mediation and encounter in postmodern (liquid) society, lacking in collectivity. In the author’s words:

In industrial, individualistic and modern society, ritual tends to create the collective moment, succumbing to the individual and the regional in the collective and the national. Hence the celebrations and, above all, the sporting rites, in which the dialectic of individualist competition ends up forming a totality encompassed by those who emerge victorious (Damatta, 1997, p. 33).

Thus, it is symmetrically opposed in tribal matrix societies, where collectivity is present every day and the rituals enact questions about the individual. Playact such as rites of passage linked to distressing moments (Turner, 1982), individualizing or maturing spiritual ones, such as the girl-to-woman transition rites, at the onset of their menstrual period, demonstrate the vector that departs from the collective to the individual in the ritualization of certain matrix societies.

However, it is obvious that the rites of passage of tribal matrix societies differ greatly from the character of festivity in itself or from festivity over time, since it does not necessarily need a purpose conditioned on biological or physiological work, as Bakhtin argues:

Carnival festivities and the comic spectacles and ritual connected with them had an important place in the life of medieval man. […] All these forms of protocol and ritual based on laughter-and consecrated by tradition existed in all the countries of medieval Europe: they were sharply distinct from the serious official, ecclesiastical, feudal, and political cult forms and ceremonials. They offered a completely different, nonofficial, extraecclesiastical and extrapolitical aspect of the world, of man, and of human relations; they built a second world and a second life outside officialdom, a world in which all medieval people participated moreorIess, in which they lived during a given time of the year. […] This double aspect of the world and of human life existed even at the earliest stages of cultural development (1984, p. 5-6).

By discussing carnivalization processes as the axis for the disruptive relations with the official world, Bakhtin approaches a popular ideal of politics against the obscurantism of the politics of sadness, which becomes even more necessary when discussing the duality of the world that was forming in the public sphere - in the spaces of squares and streets temporarily taken by the festive collectivity as a strategy of joy to cope with the times of shadow.

Carnival is evidently an event foreseen by officiality in Brazil, and despite being publicly funded and regulated as a national holiday, it bears considerable tensions in its structure. However, it is still an extraordinary moment, in distancing itself from the daily experience of the population of large cities, where fun, decentralization, and the subversion of moral values and suspension of hierarchies, as Bakhtin noted regarding the Rabelais context, are not a major constant in contemporary everyday life.

The fact that Brazil is still an immensely unequal country must also be considered, its history is obscure and its Christian legacy still weighs on the body that suffers from the pleasures of the flesh; under official and tacit contradictions during the carnival festivities, in which the collective imagination produces meanings that the body in celebration is allowed, suspending the weight of being only functional or institutionalized - or even suspending the colonized body - through the paths of history that crosses Brazilians as a people.

Belo Horizonte also has in its official festive schedule in the parade of samba schools - the Estação do Samba is the biggest bet of the local public initiative for the festivity. As in Rio de Janeiro’s street carnival, the primary function of encouraging the government to attend the event is based on the need to increase the tourist flow in the city during the holiday. Contrary to the municipal initiatives, young people from the state capital, for about nine years, have been proposing a carnival that motivates the city’s own residents to occupy the streets to celebrate them, to claim them. This has reactivated something essential in the Brazilian carnival that had been lost in the city: its irreverence and spontaneity.

Boosted by the events at Praia da Estação, a collective performance that occupies a downtown square as if it were a beach, its version as a carnival block arises right at the start of the first waves, presenting acid songs with high political content, beachgoers now dress up as revelers to criticize the government’s prohibitions on the use of the city, among other issues of such importance to the community.

Praia da Estação has been a performative event in response to the attempts to privatize the use of Praça da Estação, following the decree made by former mayor Márcio Lacerda, who, at the end of 2009, prohibited events of any kind to occur on the square and, with new addendums, regulated the use from the payment of exorbitant daily rates.

The calls to the beachgoer citizen began with such action, so they could jointly occupy the square, summoning the imagination of the beach culture from the sharing of signs, gestures and clothing. As carnival signs, gestures and clothing have been incorporated, there is a hybridization movement between beachgoers and revelers, which has impacted and encouraged - to certain extent - the street carnival, which grows exponentially each year in so many corners in Belo Horizonte.

Under the controversial aegis of the confrontation carnival, blocks have multiplied everywhere, small and immense crowds have gathered to present their issues while playing of occupying the city and being seen, converging on the vital need to appear but also to share the experience via the body in celebration, forming micro forms of identification that vary between gender, sexuality, race, centrality and periphery, but that are also fluid - as are the dynamics of street carnival.

As happened in Recife after the Manguebeat effervescence, which, by electrifying the mangrove forests, gained aesthetic dimensions beyond itself, proportions beyond music and carnival, impacted the artistic production and came to light in full force, in Belo Horizonte it was also possible to follow the particular aesthetic formations in the local carnivalization after Praia da Estação - which was also striking in its theatrical subjects. Many were the spectacles that shared such aesthetic, whether in the dramaturgy, in the details of makeup, in the debauchery speech or even in the updated relationships with the street. Important guidelines emerged to think about the imaginary city of carnival beyond it, imaginary and real, but with the idyllic tone of suspension, as attributed to such event.

Conclusion

The starting question from the appropriation of the signs of a supposed left performatively iterated by a new right puts us before this exponentially growing phenomenon, the carnival of Belo Horizonte, with its substance of joy, the final proof, still raw, produced by what has been called the festive left, a new progressive field based on the refusal of old paradigms and institutions like political parties and unions, a field such as the autonomist movements in the streets in 2013.

As in this celebration - a result from the production of spaces, subjectivities and micropolitical relations -, the observation of our time from what will come performatively and how it will affect the aesthetic production of joy is worthy of consideration since such celebration is understood as the deepest due to its light or shadow, or by the observation of the highly complex - and even dangerous - notions of temporality that it embraces.

As Cepêda (2018) pointed out, the new right places the dark aspects of the refusal of progress towards the principles of equality in its numerous hybrid shelves, thus reaffirming the social nature based on the exclusion of the people from the paths that lead to the social welfare by attacking the policies that envision it. On the other hand, the solar politics of the festive left - which seeks new ways of producing the political body in the social space through joy and hierarchical inversions, the denaturalization of the universal, such as in the identity agenda and the immanent production of the politics of the everyday life - present the inherent frailties in its temporal aspect, even of the festivities and carnivals in the face of the ephemerality and discontinuity, in more concrete levels, of their intentions for the common good.

If the so-called new right produces a chest of poorly-made copies, performed by the iteration and distortion of leftist performances, then the progressive field seems to be focused on a policy that, by the need to cope with sad affections, persists in an euphoric, local and transitory view; partially by the discovery of its powers to a solar policy guided by the immediate differentiation to the opposite field thus producing political impacts that are restricted to its field of action, given its tendency to localism.

It is still early to understand the implications in both fields, but it is interesting to note the performative relationships by difference and approximation. Both new fields between new right and festive left seem to conform in their temporal understanding of history and truth. Keeping their particularities and each one with its motivations, these movements distance themselves of any search for the idea of truth, breaking away from the modernist thought.

If joy is the final proof, how to make it cheer in sad times - beyond its small axes? How to continue the solar policy to build a common good beyond ephemeral performances? What are the risks of refusing to establish narratives, even if multiple, in the progressive field? What are the losses and weaknesses in the repetitions forged within the conservative field - which the progressive field seems to resist perceiving as a strategy of visibility and expansion of the iteration - in a process of performative driving force far beyond the local? And finally, what is the limit of paradoxical joy when facing the tragic in which we are immersed?

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• 1
  Vera Alves Cepêda is a professor and researcher of Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCar), Brazil.
• 2
  According to Löwy (2015), the Brazilian situation has its own characteristics. Whether our new right is the continuity of lineages that have always been in the frame of our political thought or whether the recent articulation standard mimics deep changes (his conception on politics and its institutions, as well as tools of action) that give origin to an unprecedented scene, these are questions that need to be addressed by the analysts. Several recent works have produced significant contributions both in the indication of variations pertaining to the field of the new right and in its affiliation to changes in the political context and in the emergence of new arenas of public opinion formation (Cepêda, 2018, p. 51).
• 3
  The diversity of the new right field among: “[...] enthusiasts of the military regime, who would wish and action by force to shatter the current state of things; there are conservative ones who comply with a more ‘continental’ European bias, preferring a more ‘religious’ figure; there are those who advocate for the return of monarchy; those who advocate for more or less State [...] the ‘libertarians’, who preach for the privatization of everything they can and, in an extreme extent, reach anarchic-capitalism” (Berlanza, 2017, p. 243).
• 4
  In Spanish in the original: ‘La proferencia de esos enunciados ha cambiado el mundo. Los enunciados de este tipo no solo dicen algo, sino que realizan exactamente la accion que expresan, es decir: son autorreferenciales porque significan lo que hacen, y son constitutivos de realidad porque crean la realidad social que expresan. Son estos dos rasgos distintivos los que caracterizan a los enunciados performativos. Lo que los hablantes de las distintas lenguas siempre han sabido y han practicado de forma intuitiva lo formulaba por primera vez la filosofia del lenguaje: el habia tiene potencial para modificar el mundo y para transformarlo’ (Fischer-Lichte, 2011, p. 48).
• 5
  At this point there is no search on the purity of the new, but the notion that such fertile performances of the copy present these copies as inaugural and original, a phenomenon possible by the historical erasure of the narratives that anchor them.
• 6
  Headlines that proclaimed the impact of the app in the last elections: “Disseminated through Brazil, WhatsApp shall be a decisive channel in the elections” (Estadão, 2018, n. p.); Impact of WhatsApp in the elections is highlighted in debate on fake news (Tribunal Regional Eleitoral da Bahia, 2018, n. p.); “Council of the Federal Election Commission meets with WhatsApp spokespersons on the impact of the app in the elections” (O Globo, 2018, n. p.).
• 7
  T. N.: Wisława Szymborska (1923-2012).
• This original text, proofread by Ananyr Porto Fajardo, is also published in Portuguese in this issue of the journal.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  31 Oct 2019
• Date of issue
  2019

History

• Received
  15 Mar 2019
• Accepted
  22 July 2019