LIBRARIES AND CULTURAL RESISTANCE IN PERIPHERAL TERRITORIES

Abstract

The aim of this work is to present an account of some experiences lived during an empirical stage of doctoral research, investigating resistance practices in the cultural field in peripheral territories of Latin America. As a methodology, in addition to a bibliographic survey carried out in previous stages, it adopted immersions in institutional dynamics and the collection of testimonies in the public libraries of the Unified Educational Centers of the city of São Paulo, under a dialogical perspective and in an exercise of attentive listening. The theoretical framework includes authors who discuss issues related to the Anthropocene (Latour, Haraway, Tsing), decoloniality (Carneiro, Duque-Cardona, Quijano, Walsh) and cultural and political action (Freire, Gadotti, Doria). It identified how these public libraries actively connect to the experiences of the populations in their territories, understanding these devices as strategic fronts in a struggle to imagine other possible worlds. It concludes that, in the context of cultural wars and neoliberal attacks, libraries, within their limitations, stand as a barrier to the dismantling and capture of the achievements of political movements in the peripheries.