Rir para resistir: a luta contra a ditadura na imprensa paraibana (1970-1980)

Abstract

This thesis consists in the realization of a historical study about the printed satiricalhumoristic production, present in the Paraiba press during the 1970s, with emphasis on the representative content of the remarkable social experience that was the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship. The objective of this work is, therefore, to identify and analyze, within a methodological perspective of critical-historical analysis, the way in which the resistance and confrontation to the civil-military dictatorship was represented in the Paraiba press. To this end, attention is focused especially on the production of cartoons and comics published in the main newspapers in circulation in the 1970s and which comprised the traditional press and the alternative press, through which this study sought to describe the forms of resistance and combat developed by graphic comedians during that time. Based on the theoreticalmethodological contribution of several authors from the fields of Social History and Cultural History, the analysis showed not only the character of a historical document that humor drawings are coated with, but also made clear the importance they represent for research historical when associated with articulations with different social practices and documents of the time studied and interpreted in the light of problems of historical knowledge (SILVA, M., 2018). Among the various conclusions presented at the end of this work, arising, especially, from the observation around the narrativity with which the cartoonists from Paraíba built the social memory about the political-ideological clash here highlighted, is the clear evidence that, in addition to cultural artifacts coated with a significant symbolic power, as Kucinski (2001) points out, satirical-humorous designs are more than mere symbols of civil society's resistance to authoritarianism, or the expression of a resistance movement, they are themselves resistance. Instruments to reveal, that laughter is not just an escape. It represents, as attempts to attest to this study, making use of the words of George Minois (2003), a way of facing things, of asserting itself in the face of threats and the incongruity or insipidity of all the horrors of everyday life.