The agony of literary criticism and Baco Exu do Blues' rap: Identity policy of racism and the white canon

Abstract

I elaborate on considerations around the following question: how does the poetry of a black and fat guy from the Northeast of Brazil – and who has “Exu” (Eshu or Èṣù, also called Elegba) in his name –, participate in the creation and meaning of reality? Initially, I challenge postulates designed as “canon” and “end of criticism”, marking them as a policy of producing subalternities for certain subjects, while hyperstimulating and overvaluing the so-called global canon. As an effect of racist identity policies, a white-centered canon does not bypass processes of othering, whose vigilance against eclecticism and expansion of territories of analysis ignores that the canon is a metanarrative, the result of an isomorphic illusion committed to an agenda of a totalitarian nature. By erasing the exclusionary enunciation of this tradition, I understand the poetic operation of Baco Exu do Blues as a dissident, a critical arsenal to unravel Brazil’s Jewish-Christian ciscolonial rubble.