From the Playful Strenuousness of Pará’s Pássaro Junino to William James’s Strenuous Mood

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship between aesthetics and ethics in human cultural experience by focusing on the interplay of playfulness and seriousness in Pássaro Junino (Bird of June), a popular musical theater tradition from Pará, Brazil. Reflection on the efforts of resistance and persistence undertaken to prevent the disappearance of the Pássaro led us to construct the notion of playful strenuousness , designating the warrior-like mood of its practitioners in their struggle to preserve and ensure the continuity of this cultural tradition. Playful strenuousness emerges from the co-constructive friction between the disposition to play and the disposition to struggle within the aesth-ethical experience of the Pássaro , guided by and oriented toward an ethics of responsibility for the culture of the other. Methodologically, the study is qualitative, empirical, and conceptual, grounded in the construction of multiple dialogues between empirical forms of knowing and doing, on the one hand, and scientific knowledge, on the other.