Literature, culture and language on/from the Brazil/Paraguay border

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to reflect on the cultural, symbolic and identity dynamics in/from the territory of the Brazil/Paraguay border based on literature and other artifacts of the present culture, such as music, language, folklore, monuments, among others. As a member of this bordering place, I try to think of it as a locus that is constituted through hybridisms, contacts, distances, conflicts and refusals. The proposal is to go far beyond the map and think about how this location is constructed by constant cultural movements in scales of acts, bodies and languages in order to break assumptions of ontological priority and establish other, alternative territories. For this, it is necessary to apprehend the border region not only as an “object of study”, but, above all, as a place that produces historical and cultural idiosyncrasies that are specifically inventive, contingent and particular.