Abstract:
This work analyzes performance as a situated cultural practice, understanding it, in light of Cultural Studies, as a sensitive technology capable of organizing affects, mobilizing discourses, and interpellating subjectivities. The research begins with the premise that performance not only conveys meanings but also actively participates in the production and contestation of social and cultural meanings, serving as a form of symbolic mediation in specific historical contexts. Rather than examining music solely as a sonic form, this study proposes a reading of performance as an embodied language, shaped by technical devices, regimes of sensibility, and structures of visibility. To this end, two emblematic performances of Brazilian popular song are analyzed in depth: Gal Costa’s performance in "Divino Maravilhoso" at the 4th Festival of Brazilian Popular Music (1968), and the group Secos & Molhados' performance of "O Vira" (1973), both historically situated in the Years of Lead of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship. In both cases, the dissertation examines how scenes of interpellation, transgressive gesturalities, and forms of dramatizing the sensible are constructed to destabilize normativities and produce symbolic displacements. The work draws on theoretical approaches from authors such as Judith Butler, Stuart Hall, Victor Turner, and Richard Schechner, aiming to understand how these performances operate as political-poetic devices capable of condensing temporalities, provoking perceptive reconfigurations, and contesting meanings related to the body, language, and listening within Brazilian culture.
