Cultural Action and the Defense of the Society

Abstract

This article proposes a reflection on cultural action in the context of Brazilian society, given the challenges that the country is facing, regarding the intensification of ideological tensions between political sectors and civil society, threatening the constitution of civil, labor and cultural rights in the country. We start from the idea of barbarism, as stated by Adorno, and trace a brief history of cultural action in the country, through the understanding of Paulo Freire and François Jeanson's influence on this concept, in order to understand cultural action as a dynamizer of social relations and of diversity in the occupation of public space, according to the ideas of Hannah Arendt. We focus on a case study analyzing the actions of a theater collective active in the outskirts of the city of São Paulo and we confront the analysis with a politicalideological context understood as "cultural war" that is placed on Brazilian society today.