Music Scholars Lecture Series Talk with Alexander Dent
Music Scholars Lecture Series Talk with Alexander Dent
‘Our Life is Punk’: Policing Youth Culture Under the Brazilian Dictatorship, 1978-82
This talk examines the emergence of punk rock among São Paulo's working class during the later years of Brazil's military regime, focusing on how the state policed a youth culture it found both threatening and unintelligible. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, it explores how punk kids — teenagers from grande São Paulo as well as the ABC industrial suburbs — navigated routine arrest, police violence, and deliberate provocation while building one of the most vital underground scenes in the global punk movement. As Brazil and much of the world contend with authoritarian resurgence, this history offers a pointed lens on how states manage dissent through cultural policing, the criminalization of youth, and the strategic use of disorder as pretexts for repression.
Alexander Dent is a linguistic anthropologist whose research and teaching address language media, intellectual property, technology and music in Latin America (Brazil) and the United States. His first book (River of Tears-- Duke 2009) examined Brazilian Country music and his second (Digital Pirates-- Stanford 2020) analyzed digital textuality and contemporary textual circulation. Current projects revolve around cell phones, AI (largely LLMs) and the policing of Brazilian punk. He is a member of DC punk band Cash on the Nail.
‘Our Life is Punk’: Policing Youth Culture Under the Brazilian Dictatorship, 1978-82
This talk examines the emergence of punk rock among São Paulo's working class during the later years of Brazil's military regime, focusing on how the state policed a youth culture it found both threatening and unintelligible. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, it explores how punk kids — teenagers from grande São Paulo as well as the ABC industrial suburbs — navigated routine arrest, police violence, and deliberate provocation while building one of the most vital underground scenes in the global punk movement. As Brazil and much of the world contend with authoritarian resurgence, this history offers a pointed lens on how states manage dissent through cultural policing, the criminalization of youth, and the strategic use of disorder as pretexts for repression.
Alexander Dent is a linguistic anthropologist whose research and teaching address language media, intellectual property, technology and music in Latin America (Brazil) and the United States. His first book (River of Tears-- Duke 2009) examined Brazilian Country music and his second (Digital Pirates-- Stanford 2020) analyzed digital textuality and contemporary textual circulation. Current projects revolve around cell phones, AI (largely LLMs) and the policing of Brazilian punk. He is a member of DC punk band Cash on the Nail.