CAPOEIRA AS a RESOURCE: MULTIPLE USES of CULTURE UNDER CONDITIONS of TRANSNATIONAL NEOLIBERALISM Laurence Robitaille
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CAPOEIRA AS A RESOURCE: MULTIPLE USES OF CULTURE UNDER CONDITIONS OF TRANSNATIONAL NEOLIBERALISM Laurence Robitaille A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Communication and Culture York University Toronto, Ontario December 2013 © Laurence Robitaille, 2013 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the shifting meanings and values attached to capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian ‘martial game’, as it circulates as a ‘cultural resource’ in the context of neoliberal globalization. Since the 1970s, immigrating Brazilians brought their practice to new lands and commercialized their embodied knowledge and cultural difference. While they initially sought to create economic capital, a whole range of indirect repercussions followed: they generated affective communities, disseminated a Brazilian imaginary soon transformed into symbolic capital, and arguably transmitted an embodied memory that can be traced back to the practice’s African ancestry. This multi-sited ethnographic study uses a mixed methodology to explore how capoeira’s circulation in North American markets enables its multiple uses. A central commitment to theoretical analysis is conveyed by each chapter’s distinctive theoretical framing. Chapter One demonstrates processes of creation of political and ideological value as it examines capoeira’s role in the twentieth century formation of Brazilian nationalism. Chapter Two describes a new paradigm for considering ‘culture’ in a neoliberal political economy in which cultural goods and services assume new valuations. Chapter Three describes capoeira’s commercialization through theories on transnationalism and concepts of economic anthropology. Chapter Four analyses the construction of a field of discourse that renews capoeira’s semantic values, specifically as it relates to the field of Brazilian culture. Chapter Five turns to theories on affect to account for capoeira’s experiential, embodied, and phenomenological power to generate relations of intimacy uniting practitioners. This affective exchange, I argue, drives the whole cross-cultural economy of transnational capoeira. Chapter Six studies capoeira as performance to understand how its traditional system of values is perpetuated. This study demonstrates that capoeira’s transnational circulation has generated a coherent system of interacting values fueled by individual entrepreneurship but also socially experienced and collectively perpetuated. It shows how cultural objects, representations, and practices can be intentionally wielded to generate a broad range of benefits including, but not reduced to, economic ones. Understanding culture in such pragmatic terms highlights cultural actions’ potential to contribute to broader fields of value, where value is understood as simultaneously economic, politic, cultural, and affective, and both socially and individually generated. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For many years, I have read the acknowledgements page of other dissertations; they were my bizarre way of reminding myself that there was an end to the long doctoral process. Now it is finally my turn to express my genuine and profound gratitude to all of those who, from points of proximity and distance, helped me get through this monumental endeavour. My supervisor Dr. Rosemary J. Coombe pushed me to be intellectually rigorous; she made me explore theoretical fields I would not have thought to chart on my own, and encouraged me to try out ideas that were unexpectedly (for me) appropriate means of understanding capoeira. Our rich discussions shaped my thinking while giving me enough leeway to develop my own ideas. I thank her for holding both the form and the content of this dissertation to the highest of standards. Dr. Danielle Robinson introduced me to the fascinating field of dance studies and drew my attention to the complexities of embodied knowledge and research. She also welcomed me into an intellectual community that reached past campus and connected me to scholars who shared similar interests. Danielle’s human sensitivity was invaluable. Dr. Ken Little provided energetic and shrewd comments at key moments of the process, helping me to formulate central arguments and to refine my positions. When he first encountered me and my inchoate dissertation outline, his enthusiasm for my project and the engaging discussion that ensued renewed my motivation. His passion for research is contagious. It would have been impossible to survive financially without the Doctoral Fellowship I received from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Diane Jenner helped me to navigate the administrative labyrinth so that I could carry on this transnational project within the university’s institutional requirements. Dr. James Cisneros witnessed and catalyzed the genesis of many of my ideas on capoeira and cultural resources while he supervised my MA thesis, and I am most grateful that this intellectual dialogue has continued over the years. It would be impossible to name all the capoeiristas who generously shared their time, knowledge, and passion. In any case, to attempt to do so would compromise the already fragile anonymity that this dissertation requires. So to all of you I just say Valeu! You are the flesh (literally and metaphorically) of this dissertation. No words could adequately express my gratitude to Monique et Norbert, for the invaluable help they gave me, including all the inflexions that the word “help” can take. Merci, merci, merci. Finally, I dedicate this dissertation to Ximena Osegueda, who never got the chance to write her own acknowledgements. Brilha no ceu, Ximena Guerreira. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ iii INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1 0.1. WHAT IS CAPOEIRA? .......................................................................................... 4 0.1.1. Elusive definitions and conflicting narratives....................................................4 0.1.2. Kinesthetic approaches ......................................................................................7 0.2. PERSONAL NARRATIVE AND POSITIONALITY .......................................... 10 0.3. INITIAL QUESTIONS .......................................................................................... 12 0.4. METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 14 0.4.1. Ethnographic fieldwork ...................................................................................16 0.4.2. Reflexivity and flexibility ................................................................................22 0.4.3. Embodied research ...........................................................................................29 0.5. STRUCTURE OF THE DISSERTATION ............................................................ 31 CHAPTER ONE: FROM PRACTICE OF RESISTANCE TO NATIONAL POPULAR CULTURE: HISTORICAL CONTEXT ...................................................39 1.1. PRACTICE OF RESISTANCE AND TARGET FOR REPRESSION ................. 42 1.1.1. Capoeira in the colonial society: function of liberation in Afro-Brazilian circles .........................................................................................................................42 1.1.2. Towards the penal code: capoeira as target for repression of the African population ..................................................................................................................47 1.2. CAPOEIRA EMBRACED BY THE BRAZILIAN NATION .............................. 57 1.2.1. Getúlio Vargas, Brazilian nationalism, racial democracy ...............................59 1.2.2. National-popular, culture and hegemony .........................................................67 1.2.3. Capoeira Regional – or how capoeira becomes national popular culture ........73 1.2.4. Capoeira Angola – counterpoint to racial democracy ......................................80 1.2.5. Rise and spread of capoeira Regional ..............................................................88 CHAPTER TWO: CULTURE AS A RESOURCE UNDER CONDITIONS OF NEOLIBERALISM .........................................................................................................98 2.1. NEOLIBERALISM AND NEOLIBERAL GOVERNMENTALITY .................. 99 2.2. THE EXPEDIENCY OF CULTURE .................................................................. 106 2.3. USES OF CULTURE AS A RESOURCE .......................................................... 112 v 2.3.1. The entrepreneurial approach to culture: economic sustainability and autonomy..................................................................................................................112 2.3.2 The development approach: social and political empowerment ....................119 2.3.3. Seeking full citizenship via cultural rights: the performative value of culture123 2.4. THE ALL-ENCOMPASSING QUALITY OF EXPEDIENCY .......................... 129 CHAPTER THREE: CREATING MARKETS: TRANSNATIONALIZATION, PROFESSIONALIZATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION OF CAPOEIRA ...135 3.1. MECHANISMS OF TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF CAPOEIRA ............... 136 3.1.1. Mestres’