Abstract
In this article, which focuses on the representation of consumption in the periphery in the short story collection No país da infância (2019), by Brazilian writer Cris Lira, I argue that, through an approach to everyday life, in Henri Lefébrvre's sense, which frames the everyday as that which is “humble and solid,” Lira's stories reflect and at the same time create affective and critical experiences of what it means to grow up in the Brazilian periphery in the 1980s and 1990s in the face of the pressures of consumer culture. I argue that Lira, by imagining the uses of several commodities, identifies what Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (2006GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich (2006). Aesthetic experience in everyday worlds: reclaiming an unredeemed utopian motif. New Literary History, v. 37, n. 2, p. 299-318.) calls “crises,” that is, small interruptions of everyday life (302) that the aesthetic experience with commodities is capable of producing. From this perspective, No país da infância makes a hopeful critique of consumer society, aligning itself with writers such as Marcus Vinícius Faustini (2009FAUSTINI, Marcus Vinícius (2009). Guia afetivo da periferia. Rio de Janeiro: Aeroplano.) in their representation of the periphery, as I argue elsewhere (Bezerra, 2022Bezerra, Lígia (2022). Everyday consumption in twenty-first-century Brazilian fiction. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.).
Keywords:
everyday life; consumption; periphery