Brazil or “Brazis”?

Diversity, divisions and cultural hybridism in Aluísio Azevedo’s O Cortiço

Abstract

The cultural formation of Brazil has always been linked to the aspects of its plurality. The contact between multiple cultures established an important role for the reformulation of practices appropriated by local conditions, which revitalized their cultural identity. Thus, in this article he proposes to work on these cultural issues in The Cortiço, by Aluísio Azevedo, on the perspective of Cultural Studies, in order to point out the cultural views that Brazil constituted in the novel. For this purpose, concepts such as multicultural ism and multiculturalism in Hall (2003) were used as theoretical basis, as well as discussions about the powers of capital in Bourdieu (1987) and the notions of cultural interactions — aculturation, transculturation and hybridism —in Fernando Ortiz (1983), Peter Burke (2006) and Rama (2008). As results obtained, he came to the conclusion that the novel presents two distinct cultural views, which we call macro and microcosmic of the novel: in the first, society is culturally divided into high and low culture, and its distinction is operationalized on coercive action of social factors expressed in the trajectory of João Romão, and in the second , cultural contact mediates the integralization of differences, contributing to the idealization of Brazilian culture in cultural hybridism embodied in mulattos – Firmo, Porfiro and Rita Baiana.