Banca de DEFESA: Rodolfo Luiz Costa de Godoi

Autonomy and the politicization of Brazilian theatre

theatre history; theatre festivals; performing arts; moral scandal; politicization; autonomy and heteronomy;

The thesis investigates the relations between autonomy and politicization in Brazilian theatre from a sociology of the theatrical field, arguing that the politicization of theatre has been one of the central driving forces of its autonomization in Brazil. In the first part, the thesis reconstructs the genesis and structure of this field by analysing the social history of theatre and the role of festivals and graduate programmes in performing arts in the production of hierarchies, beliefs and forms of consecration. It shows how the modernization of Brazilian theatre sought autonomy from the commercial model, which was dependent on the moral mainstream of society and, for that very reason, a reproducer of stigmatized forms. National, racial, regionalist and class-based movements of politicization implied both the autonomization of the commercial model and a shift from reproduction to symbolic production. From this historical process, two institutional forms analysed here became consolidated: theatre festivals and graduate programmes in performing arts. Multiple correspondence analysis reveals hierarchies among festivals and four main clusters—restricted, broad, medium and local festivals—in which internationalization and politicization are distinctive features. Graduate programmes compete over the illusio of the theatrical field, in which politicization is reconverted into field-specific aesthetic criteria, while at the same time relating to productions shaped by publishing houses—thus organising a factory of symbolic revolutions. In the second part, the thesis analyses how these structures are actualized in the case of the play The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven, examining the moral, political and religious disputes surrounding the work. The different social trajectories of the artists converge in a belief shared within the theatrical field: politicization. Compared with the exegesis of the play, these trajectories make it possible to understand the decisive symbolic operation of reversing the expectations of the theatrical pole and of mobilizing the Christian repertoire in favour of politicization against the stigmatization of transgender identity, through an internal movement aimed at theatrical rules and an external movement aimed at public debate. With regard to the latter, the thesis analyses the disputes surrounding the play through six cases of persecution, showing the stances taken by various political actors as a form of political moralization, in the midst of transformations in the national political game: the symbolic revolution undertaken forces objectification, insofar as the play becomes good to dispute. In light of these results, autonomy was not constituted as an aversion to politics, but through its incorporation and refraction within the field. By highlighting politicization as the illusio of the field, it becomes possible to rethink the relationship between autonomy, heteronomy, engagement and symbolic production in cultural fields.