Impasses of resistance: notes on Cacaso’s last poetry

Abstract

Antônio Carlos de Brito, known as Cacaso, is, not without reason, associated with the notion of cultural “resistance” to the dictatorship. An exponent of so-called marginal poetry, he participated as an artist and agitator in the main debates of the time about the reaction of poetry to social “suffocation.” This article analyzes his last poetry, focusing on Mar de Mineiro (1982) and the later poems collected in Beijo na Boca e outros poemas (1985), to understand how this production formalizes the political and aesthetic impasses of the period of Brazilian redemocratization. Starting from the notion of structural reduction in Antonio Candido and the mediations between lyric poetry and society in Adorno, the study examines how this “resistance” is formalized in the body of the poems. Thus, it is argued that humor operates as a form of negativity in his poetry: it exposes the conventions of old leftist ideals; it displays the absence of historical-political perspectives; it registers the disenchantment with the political “opening”; and marks the universalization of the financial nexus.