Abstract
The present paper aims to discuss the concept of festa as a concept field for producing new modes and forms of living within cities. In order to depict the strategies of festa, it will be used as an example the carnival in Belo Horizonte, a city in the southeastern region of Brazil. Since the city’s carnival revival in 2009, it has been appropriated by the state as a source of strategies both struggling to reclaim the right of the city and/or for the development of public politics and urban planning initiatives. The argument herein is that the democratic paradox (Chantal Mouffe) brought about through the festa transforms the city into a spatiality of a war, although not a war that serves to reproduce the exercise of power of the state, but rather one that contaminates and produces diversity.
Keywords:
urban planning; festa; democracy; politics; carnival; war