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| Author(s): |
Renata Monteiro Siqueira
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo (FAU/SBI) |
| Defense date: | 2021-12-13 |
| Examining board members: |
Eduardo Alberto Cusce Nobre;
Jorge Bassani;
Petrônio José Domingues;
Marc Adam Hertzman;
Luiz Gustavo Freitas Rossi
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| Advisor: | Eduardo Alberto Cusce Nobre |
| Abstract | |
This dissertation focuses on the history of Largo da Banana, a former public space next to the Barra Funda railway station, in São Paulo. It aims to investigate urban interventions and its cultural representations from a race relations point of view. Since the 1970s, Largo da Banana is acknowledged to be São Paulo\'s \"cradle\" of samba. According to this narrative, in the early Twentieth Century, poor black men who were manual laborers at the railway company used to alternate this informal and exhausting activity and leisure activities such as making samba in their daily lives. While those individuals are often defined in contrast to the \"modern social order\", it is widely assumed that Largo da Banana disappeared under the public works in the making of the \"metropolis\". Pacaembu overpass, built in 1958, is emblematic of such urban interventions. A teleological and evolutive conception of the urbanizing process underlies such discourse, placing black people and the modern urbanized city in opposed extremities. In the 1980s, Raquel Rolnik presented a synthesis of this perspective through her conceptualization of \"black territories\". As a \"black territory\", Largo da Banana would be a place of \"black resistance\" through essencial cultural diferences, social maladjustment, and spacial segregation. As such, it would always be fated to disappear. Aiming to explore other possible meanings for the connections between \"race\", \"culture\", \"urbanization\", and \"city\", this research combines the analysis of a diversified set of historical sources to a critical discussion on the racial conceptions that underlie that analytical approach. Daily newspapers, black press articles, recorded interviews, and samba lyrics indicate that the name \"Largo da Banana\" refers to a urban and social reality contemporary to Pacaembu overpass, during the second half of the last century, and not prior to that. Even when the cultural narrative on the \"cradle\" of samba\'s disappearance started to circulate, Largo da Banana remained a place of daily life. Therefore, this dissertation provides an interpretation of Largo da Banana\'s existence, from its \"anonymity\" (the urban processes prior to this names social acknowledgement), and its \"disappearance\" (the construction of its black identity within São Paulo samba\'s narrative), guided by the history of the construction of Pacaembu Avenue. This analysis suggests that Largo da Banana was a place of heterogeneous black struggles that are a crucial part of the history of São Paulo\'s city and urbanization, long after the alleged \"origin\" of samba. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 16/26239-8 - The overpass and the samba: Largo da Banana, urbanization and race relations in São Paulo |
| Grantee: | Renata Monteiro Siqueira |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |