Entre sambas, rodas e performances: navegando pelas poéticas orais de Matarandiba

Abstract

The doctoral thesis in question addresses the oral poetics of Matarandiba, a community of shellfish gatherers and fishermen located on the coast of the island of Itaparica, in the city of Vera Cruz, Bahia. The study of the oral tradition of Matarandiba aims to examine textual productions that relate orality, body, memory and ancestry, allowing the investigation of an unusual literary production in the tradition of the Brazilian literary area, perhaps expanding the possibilities of defining what is literary in contemporary times. Thus, I defend the idea that the cultural productions of the locality, through its narratives, as well as its samba de roda, are literatures that function as strength and resistance of an aesthetic that survives from its performances. Along this path, I understand that there is an urgent need to expand the critical scope of Brazilian literature, as well as the historiographical scope of diasporic peoples, which is why, here, I propose to expand the possibilities of approaching the oral tradition of the village, establishing ethical and aesthetic relationships between this repertoire and the scope of Brazilian literature. Its literatures and oral knowledges are engraved on the bodies of the people of Matarandiba. In this way, the analyses are based on operators that seek to reconfigure the Eurocentric power structures established in the theoretical-critical field of the humanities. Freitas (2016) provides a literary critical exercise based on the concept of epistemic pillage, which will help to uncover what has been repressed by the literary critical field that has “plundered” the literatures of dissident peoples. The idea of spiral time, developed by Professor Leda Martins (2021), from a cosmic-philosophical perspective of African ancestry, highlights that, through its literatures and its territory, Matarandiba indicates that its poetic enunciations manage to break the hierarchical temporal linearity of the Westernized chronos, since the aesthetic experiences, from these voices, bodies and drums, are in the operation of a non-linear time, but rather a curvilinear one. Therefore, the triad: body-time-movement acts as a harbinger of the literary power present in the local oral poetics. Matarandib's oral knowledge presents the scenery of the island of Itaparica, as well as the edges of its tide, in a presentation that inscribes local protagonism and belonging. From this perspective, the natural riches gravitate as living elements of this Ithaparican countercostal poetics. I bring in Krenak (2020), talking about the importance of the Earth as an active being, as well as its intertwining with the humanities, in order to think about the landscape and the process of re-signification that is carried out by the community, capable of subverting the idea of subalternity that permeates the scenery of the Contra Costa. I would like to emphasize that, throughout this thesis, we will present photographs that make up the field research collection, interviews, illustrations in the book Memórias de Terra e Mar and various videos (links can be found at the end of the thesis) produced by the community - ASCOMAT. In this context, Matarandiba's oral poetics go beyond what is written down, as they are bodies that spin in a circle of enunciative and discursive possibilities. With this in mind, I'm dialoguing with Alcoforado (1989, 2001, 2008), Costa (1998, 2015), Doring (2016), Ferreira (2004, 2010, 2014), Freitas (2016), Glissant (2021), hooks (2019, 2020, 2023), Martins (2020, 2021), Oywùmí, (2021), Sodré (1998, 2020), Zumthor (2000, 2010), among other authors who will help us think about the simultaneities that reactivate and reinstate these bodies as a “[…] tapestry of discursive meanings” (Martins, 2021, p. 21).