AUTOETNOGRAPHIC EXPERIENCES WITH WORK: the aesthetics of the fair

the aesthetics of the fair

Abstract

By resorting to the methodological expedient of autoethnography, which validates the experiences of subjects in research situations, an interpretation of a literary text will be presented that focuses on my experience as a worker at Feira de Trindade, Goiás. The text – “The aesthetics of the fair”, an chronicle essay, was made through the agglutination between a critique of performative aesthetics and the report of the significance of the fair which, for some years, was the economic foundation of my family. For its elaboration, a reflection was developed on work as a life operator and as an instance that materializes spatially. The interpretation of the informal worker's experience materialized in a link of scales, dimensions and activities of subjects. The economic dimension of the fair, the spatial, temporal, affective and symbolic dimension and the different subjects were observed. The reading of the dimensions and subjects allowed us to see that the relationship between work, memory and narrative, established between the specific and the universal, reveals the space/time conditions and contradictions of Trindade and also of Brazilian society. By proceeding in this way, the autobiography, under the magnifying glass of theoretical interpretation, becomes a contribution of an ethnography of the country, as my personal experience reveals itself in the experience of my family, and of all workers.