THE CARIOCA WAY OF BEING, AN INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE?: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE SENSES OF A CITY

Abstract

The article concentrates on four distinguished writers who published short stories in the Gazeta de Notícias and presented a vision of social reality, or rather a representation of intellectual practices of life in Rio. What can be recognized in these stories is a critical and ironic account of the way of being and acting of Cariocas from the First Republic to the 1930s. The text gives continuity to the theoretical research that examined particular subjectivity singularized in a population, a culture and a mindset immersed in trickery, eroticism and leisure, starting points of  the  “carioca way of being”. Considering this a cultural asset, in accordance with Decree 3550, we constitute ourselves as Brazilian cultural heritage of immaterial nature. According to the writers, the city of Rio de Janeiro is a faithful depository of the Carioca way of being, a result of imaginary creations, whose existence is deeply rooted in the whole material and immaterial life of today and of the past.