Interdiscoursive relations in the materiality of the Cypher: an analysis of the aesthetic discourse

Abstract

Since the 1980s, in Brazil, we have witnessed an exponential growth in the popularity of rap and, with it, a rupture, in the aesthetic discourse, between an objectified and passive peripheral subject and another, angry and demanding, typical of the periphery of the big cities. This growth has produced some sub-specifications of this musical genre, among which we highlight, in this article, cypher, a subgenre of rap in which a group of rhymers sing, completing each other's rhymes in sequence. We understand by peripheral subject, in cypher, the position signified by the inhabitant of the outskirts of large cities, today marked by their own forms of expression that stand out in relation to classic Brazilian literature. This difference does not only occur in relation to more distant works such as Dom Casmurro (1899), Os sertões (1902) or Vidas secas (1938), but also in more recent publications such as Quarto de despejo (1960), by Carolina Maria de Jesus. To a certain extent, the cypher materializes a “rhetoric of the periphery” in which the subject, paraphrasing Courtine (2015), expresses his anger. In this sense, this article proposes an analysis of the aesthetic discourse in the materiality of the Favela Vive cypher. In total, four songs constitute our corpus. We mobilize the concept of interdiscourse to think about how the peripheral subject is constituted based on the intricate relationship between military, political-economic, religious, and pedagogical discourses.