Symbolic and Aesthetic Experience in Psychology: Everyday Narratives on Faith Clothing in the Afro-Brazilian Context

• Grant number: 25/02203-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: June 01, 2025
• End date: January 31, 2029
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Danilo Silva Guimarães
• Grantee: Igor Paulo de Souza
• Host Institution: Instituto de Psicologia (IP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The research deepens the theoretical approach of Semiotic-Cultural Constructivism (CSC) in Psychology on the understanding of aesthetic experience and its role in the processes of differentiation-approximation in intersubjective relationships. Understanding the historical efforts that contributed to the construction of a homogenized "Brazilian identity," which silenced Afro-Indigenous cultural references, the symbolic tensions between the suppression and the presentification of these references in narrative and aesthetic expressions are highlighted by tensional senses. The research starts with the empirical experience of analysis and reflection on everyday aesthetic-narrative manifestations surrounding faith clothing and wearable elements that refer to Afro-Brazilian identity in their presentification in daily life. For this purpose, the project proposes conducting open workshops, allowing the emergence of tensions arising from participation in extension activities held with the Indigenous People's Assistance Network at the Institute of Psychology at the University of São Paulo. Theoretically, potential dialogues are explored between the phenomenological conceptions of aesthetic experience in Merleau-Ponty, a recurrent interlocutor in CSC research, and the Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience by Mikel Dufrenne. Considering the empirical context taken for analysis, the research proposes dialogues addressing aesthetics, symbols, and visual narratives surrounding racial experience, drawing from Afro-Brazilian aesthetic philosophies. Based on narratives about clothing used in rituals, artistic and/or religious manifestations emerging from Afro-Brazilian traditions, as well as theoretical tensions from the traditions placed in dialogue, the research considers possible theoretical-practical reverberations in understanding the aesthetic experience within a psychological approach in CSC.