“NOTEBOOKS ON THE SEARCH FOR THE CREATURE: Attempts to find the Jaraguá through popular education”
Jaraguá. Popular Culture. Memory.
This research stems from a deep concern regarding the popular memory of the Jaraguá figure within traditional Brazilian folk performances as it endures the passage of time. Its objective is to highlight the figure's physicality, its movements, and its poetics by building an archive that sustains the memory nurtured, stirred, and cultivated within popular culture thereby contributing to the historical preservation of this traditional performance tradition. The study centers on the memory of the figure in traditional Brazilian play, examining the semiotics that shape its presence, its spectacular physicality, and the popular imagination that fuels its existence a realm where awe, mystery, and the marvelous converge. The research methodology is grounded in popular education as a formative practice, linking archive creation with the listening to narratives, memories, and traditional knowledge. It views cultural territories as spaces of confluence and knowledge production, engaging in dialogue with thinkers such as Nêgo Bispo (2023), Paulo Freire (1974), and Carlos Brandão (1982), who understand popular education as a counter-colonial formative practice, a dialogue, and a collective process of knowledge creation and the confluence of diverse forms of wisdom. Ultimately, the project seeks to strengthen the preservation of the Jaraguá’s memory and expand the dissemination of knowledge regarding its history and poetics, establishing the archive as a living space for cultivating memory and ensuring the continuity of traditional knowledge.