Antonio and the identitary Variations of Portuguese contemporary culture

Authors

  • Paula Guerra Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Letras. Instituto de Sociologia.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4013/csu.2017.53.3.11

Abstract

This article is focused on the preliminary analysis of a set of music lyrics by António Variações [Anthony Variations] (1983a, 1983b, 1984), which we consider representative of the multiple and plural identities that mark Portuguese cultural contemporaneity from the 1980s on. Approaching this musician has a double meaning: the way in which he represents the words of Fernando Pessoa when he pointed the importance of being “plural like the universe”; as well as the way in which each social actor can represent different social identities (to be at once Portuguese, a barber, catholic, from Braga, a musician and a variety artist). With this complex figure, it becomes important to analyze the cultural identity as a process (as a history and representation) that is plural, antynomous, recursive. This exercise is based on the need for a renovated epistemological understanding (Guerra, 2015b; Silva and Guerra, 2015; Guerra and Silva, 2014; Guerra and Januário, 2016) about the field of the arts as a producer of knowledge by representing the social reality in a proper and autonomous form, interfering in it and conditioning the analysis by generating interpretations of the instituted knowledge.

Keywords: António Variações, 1980s, cultural identities, local-global, tradiction-modernity.

Author Biography

Paula Guerra, Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Letras. Instituto de Sociologia.

Paula Guerra (doutorada) é Professora no Departamento de Sociologia da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto e investigadora Integrada no Instituto de Sociologia da mesma universidade (IS-UP), onde atualmente coordena o subgrupo Criação artística, práticas e políticas culturais. Faz parte ainda de outros centros de investigação internacionais e tem sido professora/investigadora visitante em várias universidades internacionais. É fundadora e coordenadora da KISMIF Conference e da Rede Todas as Artes. Rede Luso-Afro-Brasileira de Sociologia da Cultura e das Artes (com Glória Diógenes e Lígia Dabul). É autora (em conjunto com Andy Bennett) do edited book DIY Cultures and underground music scenes (Oxford: Routledge, 2017). Publicou recentemente os livros Redefining art worlds in the late modernity (Universidade do Porto, 2016), More than loud (Porto: Afrontamento, 2015), On the road to the American underground (Universidade do Porto, 2015), As Palavras do Punk (Lisboa: Alêtheia, 2015), More Than Loud (Porto: Afrontamento, 2015), A instável leveza do rock (Porto: Afrontamento, 2013). E é autora de inúmeros artigos publicados em revistas nacionais e internacionais de referência: Journal of Sociology, Popular Music and Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Critical Arts, Portuguese Journal of Social Sciences, Sociologia, Problemas e Práticas, Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais.

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Published

2017-09-22

Issue

Vol. 53 No. 3 (2017): September/December

Section

Dossiê: Artes e criatividade: identidades e diferenças entre o local e o global

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