Lucky people: narratives on hope and artistic production in nowadays Brazil

ABSTRACT: This article aims to identify narratives of hope produced by artists and cultural groups that develop their activities having as cultural reference the Brazilian peripheries. Such peripheral subjects find themselves in a "moment of danger", according to Walter Benjamin's expression. They are threatened by the upsurge of armed violence against the black and favela's populations, by the deepening of economic inequality, by the destruction of public policies for culture, and by the pandemic of COVID-19. In this context, these subjects seek to reinvent themselves to continue carrying out their artistic and cultural work. These narratives of hope are understood here as practice, in dialogue with applied linguistics and linguistic anthropology, as well as with the Bakhtinian view of language as interaction. This article is also affiliated to the anthropological reflections proposed by Vincent Crapanzano, Arjun Appadurai, and others who have been dedicated to setting an Anthropology of the Future and an Anthropology of Hope.

Keywords:
Hope; narratives; future; danger; cultural policies