“This is Maré”: dance and performance as strategies of representation and of resistance of peripheral youth in a necropolitical environment

Abstract

This article investigates the intersections between Black youth, art, culture, and violence, analyzing their implications for the construction of knowledge and representations of youth in favelas. It is grounded in the poststructuralist theoretical framework of Cultural Studies, mobilizing the concepts of pedagogies of death and resistance, Black youth, performance, territory, and necropolitics as central analytical tools. The objective is to examine how art and dance performance are appropriated as pedagogical practices by the youth of the Complexo da Maré, enabling the construction and expression of new forms of knowledge. The research is based on authors such as Hall (2008), Mbembe (2018), Camozzato and Costa (2013). The empirical material—the music video THIS IS MARÉ, produced by the group Dance Maré and released in May 2024—is analyzed using screen ethnography (Balestrin & Soares, 2017), allowing for an exploration of how visual and digital performance contributes to the production of counter-narratives about territoriality. The results indicate that dance and art emerge as forms of resistance, re-signifying life in the favela and amplifying discourses that challenge the hegemonic representations of peripheral Black youth.