Do we still want to be ... so?

reflections on the cultural and imaginary identity of backwoods in Piauí

Abstract

How is Piauí challenged by the backwoods signs in contemporary times? It is assumed that in a state that has historically been born from the “cattle paths” and that until the 1970s was driven by the rhetoric of the “pastoral destiny”, there are reasons to think of genealogies and their resignifications in light of the backwoods category. Thus, identifying, deconstructing, and reworking backwoods meanings remains a contemporary task, either by rediscovering already known meanings or by discovering new ones for one's own backwardness. However, among us, this is an incipient debate, although diffuse signs of backlands emerge in the imponderables of sociocultural life, whether in the capital, Teresina, or in different regions of the interior of the state, including the cerrados, which become a new frontier. like a disenchanted backwoods. An exegesis of the hinterland images escapes the limits of this article due to the popular polysemy of the present imagination, including in the sociography of reflection on Brazil that diagnoses, drives, organizes, defines and directs actions. However, identifying active signs and symbols in the backwoods imaginary questioning subjectivities and producing meaning for the “Piauiense nation” becomes first order motives.