“Despite you”: the cultural power of Chico Buarque in times of open defense of the brazilian workers party

O poder cultural de chico buarque em tempos de defesa aberta do partido dos trabalhadores

Abstract

During his career as an artist, Chico Buarque de Hollanda has worked,
among others, in the areas of music and literature. His performance as
an artist, that since 1989, openly supports the Brazilian Workers Party,
is the object of study of this essay, in which it crosses the concepts of
soft power (Joseph Nye) and symbolic power (Pierre Bourdieu). We
come up with the concept of cultural power, understood as the power of
artists that, with the product they generate, they seduce, influence, sell
and, therefore, participate in human history in their own way. Using the
Google Trends to detect the popularity of Chico Buarque, electing the
essay as a way of thought expression and moving it in the scope of the
so called South epistemologies (Boaventura de Sousa Santos), our main
goal is to delimitate the possible meanings of the concept of cultural
power, being guided by the following question: the political positioning
of Chico Buarque, in times of crisis of the hard power of PT, affects his
cultural power in Brazil and in the world?