On cultural paradoxes: culture, agency, identity, representation, and the survival of peripheral subjects in the “Era of the Periphery”This article analyzes the transformations, tensions, and paradoxes that shape the cultural production of São Paulo’s urban peripheries between 2016 and 2024. Drawing on ethnographic scenes and testimonies from diverse cultural agents, it examines how disputes over visibility, conflicts surrounding funding programs, ambivalent relations with the State, and the increasing commodification of peripheral identity have reconfigured practices and discourses within what has been called the “Era da Perifa.” I argue that the pedagogical, aesthetic, and political project that characterized Marginal/Peripheral Literature and cultural collectives in previous decades has, in recent years, undergone a process of reordering. This shift is evidenced by the incorporation of entrepreneurial logics, dependence on public and private funding mechanisms, and the emergence of internal hierarchies previously rendered invisible. Engaging with authors such as Hall, Abu-Lughod, Ortner, Giddens, Reyes, Comaroff, and Wacquant, I contend that the concept of culture - often mobilized as a positive and unquestionable value - must be critically examined in its political, economic, and subjective dimensions. I argue that, although peripheral identity is now valued as a cultural brand, it remains profoundly shaped by precarization, structural racism, and everyday struggles for survival. Thus, the article seeks to understand the limits and possibilities of agency for peripheral cultural producers, highlighting tensions between recognition and capture, resistance and assimilation, community and market.
Keywords:
Urban Peripheries; Cultural Production; Agency; Identity; Neoliberalism