Youth without misery: aesthetics of an economy of expenditure

Abstract This paper dedicates itself to approaching some ethnographic report excerpts, interviews and images, generated in a universe of marginalized youth cultural practices – especially the piXação and Bate-Bola groups, both very popular in the suburbs and slums of Rio de Janeiro – comparing them with the Turner’s concepts of communitas/liminality and with Bataille’s expenditure. From this empirical and theoretical junction, the paper suggests that such ways of living, indeed some of the most neglected subjectivities of our schools and cities, offer in their performances, in their ethical and aesthetical qualities, good indicators to understanding the epistemological grounds of their incompatibility to the normative prescriptions, i.e., they evidence the economically and libidinally miserable limits of the subjectivity machines that foment their exclusion; precisely because they do not fit in, they overflow. Nietzsche, Castoriadis and Maffesoli, reinforce this work’s theoretical apparatus.

摘要 本研究致力于梳理源自边缘青年文化实践场域的民族志报告节选、访谈资料与影像素材——尤以在里约热内卢郊区与贫民窟中极具影响力的piXação群体与Bate-Bola群体为代表——并将其与特纳（Turner）的communitas（共融）/liminality（阈限）概念以及巴塔耶（Bataille）的耗费理论进行对比分析。基于这一经验研究与理论框架的结合，本研究指出，此类生活方式——实则是我们的教育体系与城市中最受忽视的主体性形态之一——通过其实践展演、伦理与审美特质，为理解其与主流规范相悖的认识论基础提供了绝佳切入点：它们揭示了催生其被排斥处境的主体性机制在经济与力比多层面的匮乏边界；正因它们无法融入主流秩序，故而始终溢出既有框架。尼采（Nietzsche）、卡斯特里亚迪斯（Castoriadis）与马费索利（Maffesoli）为本次研究的理论框架提供了支撑。