The girls at the "beginning of the end of the world": te(n)sions and silencings in the gender relations of the punk movement in São Paulo

Abstract

This article examines the role of young women in the festival “O Começo do Fim do Mundo,” held in 1982 at Sesc Pompéia (São Paulo) and widely regarded as a symbolic landmark in the rise of the punk movement in Brazil. The text draws on documentary analyses, especially photographs and audiovisual records, as well as journalistic sources, fanzines, albums, and other historical traces of the event. Our aim is to show how gender relations were challenged by punk girls who occupied and transformed spaces marked by sexist, classist, racist, and other forms of violent and exclusionary practices. Through a dialogue with scholars and by bringing together discursive and historiographic approaches, we mobilize concepts such as discursive memory (Pêcheux, 1984) and the distribution of the sensible (Rancière, 2014) to interpret the performances, visualities, utterances, and conflicts that took place during the festival. To do so, we focus mainly on the actions of women such as Meire, Dirce (bassist of the band Juízo Final), Tina Ramos, and the band Skizitas, showing how their presence generated significant ruptures by destabilizing prevailing gender norms (Butler, 2019; hooks, 2019; Wolf, 2018) both inside and outside the punk scene. In our conclusions, we highlight the emergence of feminist forms of resistance articulated around the ethics of do-it-yourself, political–artistic engagement against the State and patriarchy, and the creation of transnational solidarity networks.