Rediscovering the past and negotiating the identity

Considerations about the sulista identity claimed by the separatist movement O Sul é o Meu País

Abstract

Assuming the separatist movement “O Sul é o Meu País” (OSMP) as a case study, this paper inquires: how are the historical and cultural elements present in the official OSMP discourse mobilized in order to legitimize the sulista ethnic identity claimed by the movement? For that purpose, a documentary and discursive analysis was carried out which, operationalizing the concepts of identity and culture, identified the relational, symbolic, temporal and material character of the sulista identity, identifying the ways in which ancestors and historical antecedents are re-signified, aiming to build a historical truth that validates the notion of being. Likewise, the paper analyses the discursive construction of the feeling of parochialism postulated by the Movement, as well as the construction of the notion of cultural superiority of the sulistas, which reverberates in a material dimension of physical exclusion of those postulated as “non-sulistas”.