Every periphery is a center

Abstract

This article addresses the soirée meetings held by Poets in Fortaleza’s ghettos, Ceará’s capital, Brazil. The yearning for a leader is no longer fundamental, nor the defense of a single ideology about reality in its concreteness. This apparently fragmented aspect of political positions in society is, however, seen as a pursuit of emancipation, identity, freedom and rebellion. This article also aims to analyze how these soirée meetings are organized as a collective action, and the way affects contribute to the possibility (or lack thereof) of the right to appear. This is a political and poetic writing of an ethnographic experience with Sarau da B1, a soirée meeting that takes place in Conjunto São Cristóvão, in Fortaleza’s southern tip. With the expression “every periphery is a center”, we discuss the identity-relation of the Poet and the implications of circularity, occupation and the productions of the ghetto, which turn this periphery into a center.