Tosco is a word that has two semantic roots: what presents itself naturally and authentically, but also what is done without refinement or refinement, something rustic or coarse. It is estimated that the term is an allusion to the inhabitants of Tuscany, this region of Italy where the Etruscans lived. As the oldest inhabitants of the Italian peninsula, they were considered a barbaric, rude and relaxed people (rough🇧🇷 TOscan can be a verb, not an adjective, which translates the action of see from afar, sight off ou perceive from a distance. We are in alignment with the idea of seeing at a glance, forming a quick idea without approaching the object or without deepening the experience. The act or effect of shear looks perfect for and Art to convey big ideas without detail, to form strong judgments without examining their consequences, or to state things that cannot be translated into real transformations when viewed up close.
It is possible that ten or fifteen years from now, art historians will characterize this period, between 2016 and 2022, as the heyday of the Brazilian rough. The expression can then be compared to English Romanticism, American Postmodernism or German Baroque, as our small contribution to the universal concert of nations. The philosophical question that defines Tosco is: “what is it for?” She is not new to the history of art or Brazilian sensibility. Basically, it starts from a relevant question that is to question the incomprehensible forms, the opaque functionings or the segregative languages that determine the position of a certain elite. However, what characterizes the new TBrazilian osco it is the appropriation of this interpellation by another type of elite, which parasitizes the denunciation as a way of producing a certain authority, at the same time that it mimics the ethics of work and production. This elite in quotes not popular but emerging. She disdains culture and education as means of social ascension, as they descend from the ancient aristocracy, for which this was never more than a secondary ornament or a symptom of their identity uncertainty. Therefore, in the end, the new Brazilian rough it is the return of the colonel of engenho repressed against the imposture of the well-behaved síndico. That's why the new Brazilian rough it is the aesthetic and philosophical expression of our clash of incivilities.
Crude Christianity ignores the age-old historical controversies over biblical hermeneutics. The crude “Pancadão” says out loud things meant to shock, like the bodies of barking dogs. The crude philosophy of Olavo de Carvalho quickly offers us a point of view of totality: a gay-communist conspiracy has taken over education and the State, via the São Paulo Forum, against which we must return to medieval values. All this based on the rhetoric of “ass”, “butt” and “shit”, but without any dialogue with the irreverence of a José Celso Martinez Correia.
It is part of Brazilian rough practice a kind of absolutist relativism. As all opinions are equally valid and as all points of view are equalized according to a very simple difference, of the left or right type, the force of my enunciation is absolute as such. Hence, the fundamental method of Brazilian rough is the gambiarra, a term that originally refers to the irregular extension of a lighting line or a “fraudulent call”, which is in every way precarious and ugly, improvised or made according to the circumstances, in the archetypal style “bracelet jeitinho”. It is seen as the rough it is the return of repressed corruption. In the gambiarra theater it is a type of frontal lighting made to reduce unwanted shadows and so that the artist does not lose concentration, through this artifice the spotlights cover the audience, transforming it into a faceless mass, the gambiarra protects the actor of your incompetence. In computing, the concept of gambiarra refers to procedures that reach their end without elegance or conciseness in operations. THE rough it is not a popular, republican expression, in the sense of the São Paulo square of arts or really naive, but the voice of the middle classes interested in denouncing, in an interpassive way [1], the imposture of the elites. It is thus understood that every “elite” must be recognized in quotation marks, because the only authentic and true elite is the rough elite, without quotation marks.
The characteristic feature ofor Tosco brazilian it is that extra gesture that makes an average work an intolerable exaggeration. Through an involuntary parody, the artist produces an effect of denunciation while defending himself by asserting his irrelevance. This is also the ambiguous formula of fake-news: for the believers it seduces, for the warned self-indulgent irony. This reappropriation of materials according to circumstances is a technical reproducibility never intuited by Benjamin.
O Brazilian rough it is an involuntary national reinterpretation of the precarious aesthetics. Precarious, derives from the Latin precarius, “obtained through prayer; granted by revocable mercy; borrowed; alien, strange; passenger". Precarius means, among other things, "little, insufficient, scarce" or "that has little or no stability; uncertain, contingent, inconsistent”. Baudelaire had already defined aesthetic modernity in terms of a precarious quest for the transient, the fugitive, and the contingent.
For Nicolas Bourriaud, precariousness is an ethical reflection on contemporary art intimately linked to the definition of reality. Judith Butler also thematizes precarious lives as lives worthy of care, given their disaffiliation and vulnerability. According to Hal Foster, no concept better encompasses all the art of the past decade than precariousness.
No Albinet Precarious Museum (2004) Thomas Hirschhorn moved original works by Duchamp, Malevitch, Mondrian, Warhol, Beuys, Le Corbusier, Léger and Dali to the outskirts of Paris. Sheltered in wooden shacks and small open-air shops, combined with cheap copies and utensils on the outskirts, the effect is created. of out of place, of ambiguity and displacement immanent to an ethics of refuge. In “25%” by Francesc Torres, at the 55th Venice Biennale we find eight “precarious” citizens representing the vast army of unemployed, young and old, men and women, of different origins and professions whose lives are losing value. Ana Gallardo in “A place to live when we seamos viejos”, in the Mamba, five headphones hang from the ceiling telling stories of receptionists, receptionists, telephone operators, promoters of sales, jewelry smugglers. In "Spain pavilion building materials” installation by artist by Lara Almarcegui the pavilion of a building, built in 1922, is filled with crushed construction rubble, piles of bricks, cement, earth and glass.
But none of that will be found in the That's itBrazilian sco which consists in the denial of the experience of precariousness and in the refusal to recognize precariousness as the aesthetics of the no place (foreigner, migrant, immigrant), of the welfare (hybrid, inhuman, no law, no rule) and the monster (invisible and indiscernible body). Hence, historically, the rise of Brazilian rough is preceded by the ostensible repression of exhibitions such as the queermuseum, in Porto Alegre, History of Sexualities, at MASP and the performance on nudity in La Bete, at the MAM in São Paulo. THE Brazilian rough it is a non-dialectical inversion of the aesthetics of precariousness. It parasitizes the force of authenticity contained in the notion of helpless lives, but it does so in the name of a warlike recovery of potency. Hence, it operates according to a logic of resentful inversions. Machismo as a non-dialectical inversion of feminism. As if violence justifies violence. He replaces what Freud called joke, with its elaboration of word and thought, for the comic, with its segregating logic based on enjoyment and ridicule on the misery of the other, as we see in Danilo Gentili.
Instead of acknowledging helplessness (Hilflosichkeit), as a common and universal condition, such an inversion creates a split between the “good citizens”, who deserve the protection of the State, and the “enemies of the people”, who threaten our children. To this extent the Brazilian rough finds its roots in the rhetoric of socialist realism. Everything shown must have the power of the example. If it is not pedagogically inclined, it should be deleted.
Education assumes the imitative assimilation of myths and heroes, with no room or place for the anti-model, for criticism or for indeterminacy. Favoring simplicity, we should choose accessible demonstrative patterns and iconic or geometric language. The idea of a central hero, of a paternalistic type, who communicates with the people directly as an omnipresence contrasts with the image of the typical worker, who must be represented one-dimensionally as a kind of entrepreneur of himself.
Art must be, above all, useful to the system. The thesis will also be found in Nazi allegorism, with its return to mythological heroes and warriors, but also in fascism and its glorification of a military and imperial state. But in the case of the crude national, the system is discursively represented by the anti-system. Art as a field of freedom, with distinct and polyphonic tendencies, is redefined as dangerous art. Here, the anti-intellectualist schemes of Hitler persecuting degenerate art, Stalin boycotting the Constructivists or Fidel against pop Art American. An example of international crudeness is the museum of independence, donated by North Korea to Namibia. Three majestic floors, in the center of Windhook, filled with a heroic, militaristic narrative with illustrative dolls and aspiration for modernity. The affinity between the rough and the realistic nationalism is confirmed in the exaltation of national symbols such as the flag, sports and Olympic idols. It has a specific symbol, marked by green and yellow, with images of dawn. The new man, at the beginning of history in which the corrupt past will be abandoned.
Recall that consumption is the general grammar in which the question “what is it for?” can be placed. Possession cosmetics is a distinctive feature of the Brazilian rough, so art is read as a chapter of the logic of exhibition and recognition. For example, the "Outfit chubby”, noted in youtube for the presentation of branded clothes, which imitate the simple ones. Exaggeratedly expensive sneakers according to an ostensibly dubious taste, but which promises its owner the constitution of a personality style.
From this it follows that the Brazilian rough involves a systematic and commercial use of sexuality, as one can intuit, in the early days of the movement, in Funk do Lepo-Lepo or in the prototypical Tram do Tigrão. The formula will find its apogee in Joyce Hasselman's videos, where the denunciation of criminal violence takes on an unexpected pornographic connotation. As well as in the urinophilic aesthetic of the presidential post about the Golden Shower it is about, through the denunciation and the rustic authenticity of the critic, to return to the true national values of the Brazilian carnival. THE Brazilian rough it is above all a failed virile aesthetic, within which the sharing of chocolate becomes a homosexual allegory. Educating through weapons and Christianizing through violence are strategies through which the rough explores the ontological feeling of insecurity. The impermanence of the projects takes up the ephemerality of the avant-gardes of the 1960s. The erratic discourse recovers the automatic writing of the surrealists.
There is much debate, in the authorship of this new era, inaugurated in 2018, what would be the use of university courses in Philosophy or Sociology, as well as the usefulness of museums and other cultural repositories: “we never won a Nobel and we suffer from chronic hypertrophy of humanities”. Assertions that carry the typical trait of exaggeration and imprecision that we have already seen to be the keynote of this style. In the name of taxpayers' money and the fight against corruption, it is not being said that philosophy and the arts are useless, only that they are a luxury that is not up to the State to sponsor. The rich and privileged may well continue their historic dedication to these contemplative pleasures for themselves. The poor need food and schools, they demand material needs met and jobs restored. But who speaks on behalf of the poor? We return here to the unsuspected affinities between the Brazilian rough and post-war socialist realism.
It would be a mistake to assent that the fundamental propositions of the coarse are anti-philosophical or counter-cultural. Claiming that Nazism is left-wing, arming the population as a way of reducing violence or rewriting the history of torture in Brazil and the Statute of Children and Adolescents involve a kind of excess of philosophy. Philosophy without method, History without rigor, Sociology without criticism, Psychology without ethics, Anthropology without diversity. All this is already available intuitively and free of charge for those who came from a good family, who developed the religious synthesis of universal thought and who were formed in the abundance of digital knowledge. Career intellectuals were awakened from their dogmatic slumber of their irrelevance by the poisonous kiss, straight out of 1964. This Sleeping Beauty effect cannot be ignored, it reveals ignorance or indifference regarding the emergence of a new aesthetic-philosophical attitude in Brazil. . Never before in this country has the importance of names such as Gramsci, Marx or Paulo Freire been discussed with such vehemence. It has never been more important to define political guidelines, with real and painful consequences for the dynamics of families, friendships and loves.
Tosco, I mean "what appears to come from nature”, that is, authentic, uncut and undisguised. It's also rough what "is done without refinement or refinement, rudely or crudely”, that is, a certain ostensible and exhibitionist pride in the thoughtless. The rough is structured like a “zueira”. Nothing in him can last longer than the natural effect of his inconsistency, subtitled by his rudeness with words and concepts. It is necessary to ignore any seriousness concerning education, culture or universities. It is necessary to accuse ideologies of gender, cultural Marxism, protection of human rights or black or LGBT minorities. It is necessary to denounce the privileges of any protection for children, indigenous people or those suffering from mental disorders. Here the strength of Brazilian rough it is in his attitude of denunciation and imitation. This lavish formula in the history of the arts carries the enunciation of resistance against the tyranny of the sensitive personality, of the invisible customs of the “smart ones” of Brazilian high culture, perceived as a club for exchanging favors and cross-maintenance of privileges. Against this, the Sofrência Sertaneja and the American translations, of the type “Together and Shalow Now” by Paula Fernandes and Luan Santana show all the strength of simplicity, enough to entertain us.
But watch out. Romero Brito is not rude, because in him there is no resentment or aggression. Tiririca is not rough either. Neither Anita nor Jojo Todinho belong to the rough. Nor should coarseness be confused with tacky, as the latter exaggerates the force of love, while its opposite is centered on hatred and envy. Neither should the rough be confused with the nerd culture, nor with the taste for animated, hentai, Or the K-pop.
Such manifestations only prepare or prevent the coming of the rough, making the language autonomous from its political content. It acts as a touch or slip that gives authenticity to the whole, not as a permanent exaggeration of a true style of identity, connected with a way of life. On the contrary, in these practices there is a continued engagement, with extensive narratives and ethical problematizations, as well as a true commitment to the other, as a different and yet admirable anthropological universe.
[Read here an article by Marcos Grispum Ferraz about the work of Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, artists representing the Brazilian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019]
O Brazilian rough it is a revolt against illusion. Not only against the specific illusions of a certain political program that preceded and conditioned it, but against the very status of illusion. Illusions make us believe in futures different from the past. Betrayed illusions make us hate the illusion work itself. If sketch and incompleteness are the typical forms of illusive production, stereotype and caricature are its non-dialectical inverse. THE Brazilian rough seems to hate art and science itself, realized in the figure of the teachers of an elite, felt as imposter and inauthentic. That’s why it’s essential for you to introduce yourself.”no party","without ideology","no obscure or ambiguous points","the same things in life as it is: note upon note”. Every local ambiguity is a certainty redoubled in the second instance, by the aesthetic community of taste. Hence the Brazilian rough be a religious aesthetic, in the Kantian sense of a community of taste and in the Lacanian sense of a community of jouissance. Let us remember that the problem here is to jump from the particularity of judgments of taste, through which something is beautiful. because so it seems to us, for something is beautiful because this is the very reality of this object.
Just as it does not recognize art or culture, education or philosophy, which are not equally crude to it, the new Brazilian rough is creation and creature produced to sanction the self-recognition of a new elite, which suddenly resized its size and importance. It may be a passing trend, like so many others, but it will certainly leave scars in the history of the Brazilian civilizing process. Let's hope it's the last song, louder than all the others, that the swan utters before disappearing.
[1] Interpassivity is a phenomenon described by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek that consists in the outsourcing of jouissance. The cheerleaders in comedy series are examples of interpassivity, because through them we hire someone to laugh in our place, just as in Brazilian crude we hire someone to criticize in our place.
Wow, this text is an Event!
A name for a certain (great) malaise has emerged.
Thank you teacher, this worked as an interpretation for me.
Our suffering has a name! That which oppresses our senses, making them a pain, may be mentioned!
When listening to a Damares, I can name the style!
Thanks
Beautiful text, perfect analysis for March of our history.
Thank you!
I partially agree, Professor.
I believe that the “rough” is older than it appears, and that it flees from social classes.
And it seems to be much more a sociological factor that dominates and creates such characters than individuality itself.
And, I believe, that we must be very careful in creating powerful terms, because what we name starts to become exact, just like when we name certain displeasures in our lives and then we begin to understand each other.
The current world; despite being created by ourselves, we barely understand the impact on our lives; it is a world of fleeting pleasures and unfortunately we are still humble, non-total servants of internally produced chemical desires.
We live in a room full of stimuli, which hijack our brains and wills and the struggle between consciousness and unconsciousness becomes more fierce every day.
Thus, the Brazilian “roughness”, for me, would be a sample of the global “roughness” with the few culturally rich stimuli, in terms of freedom of expression, of the current “tupiniquim”.
But I'll have to read it again to understand better. Hahahahaha Live to the stimulation of our mental faculties. ^^
sensational
Admirable and accurate reflection of Prof. Dunker.
To give ignorance and barbarism a status is to attribute to Bolsonaro an importance that he does not have. Soon there will be a new fashion to be crude and not be Marielle's murderer and many more, to be corrupt, ignorant, to hate diversity of color, gender, to sell from the Amazon to his mother. I didn't like it!
A dense and wise text. We really live in a world shaken by ignorance, which we didn't expect, there was still space for all these people, all embarked in a “punctured” canoe, so dry of valid ideas.
The author is a serious intellectual who reasons with the proper ballast.