Da personagem à revista: jornalismo e literatura como aliados na produção de conhecimento cultural aos olhos de Blimunda

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the magazine Blimunda, published online and distributed free of charge by José Saramago Foundation (FJS). The research is located in the area of Media Communication and discusses the context in which the socio-digital media play a central role in the development of practices and policies in the journalistic and cultural fields. The magazine, named after the protagonist of the book Baltasar and Blimunda, by José Saramago (1922-2010), is positioned as a vehicle for cultural journalism and, from the historical intersection between journalism and culture, we mobilized conceptual references linked to to the ideas of “journalism as a form of knowledge”, “cultural sphere” and “transnational activism” to target the content published in Blimunda between 2012 and 2020. In the articulation of the object with the field of research, the emergence of media phenomena is discussed in the context of the internet, which are provided by a way of positioning oneself in the cultural field based on technology, aesthetics and the intensification of transnational dialogue between public and cultural spheres that give rise to new themes, claims and ways of narrating. The dissertation seeks to understand the insertion of Blimunda's journalistic content in the network of activist practices related to the entity that publishes it, highlighting elements that are capable of pointing out the intellectual agenda of the FJS and the potential in the dimension of Blimunda's circulation since its relevance in the cultural and political context outlined. To undertake the analysis, under the theoretical perspective of Cultural Studies, an authorial and interdisciplinary methodological path was constructed, combining bibliographic review, cultural-media analysis and thematic analysis. The results indicate that Blimunda produces a type of knowledge about culture that, although it addresses artistic themes such as theater and cinema and non-artistic themes related to politics and society, has literature as a starting point, supported by the predominance of criticism and literary reviews on the pages of the magazine. In the eight-year period analyzed, the magazine discussed, in this dimension, a) the expansion of access, funding and encouragement to reading, especially for children and young people; b) continuous, specialized and collaborative coverage of an Ibero-American circuit of literary festivals and fairs, in addition to tourist itineraries linked to literature. The magazine's discourse seems to suggest that its interlocutors seek to constitute a platform of autonomous visibility in the symbolic universe of the cultural sphere, in order to make viable beliefs, values and positions, most of which are contesting and counter-hegemonic, striving to provide a representation of diversity. cultural and multiculturalism and seeking to promote human rights, with a focus on transnational solidarity.