Of blood and laughs: The Brazilian Periphery of Letters and the concept of universality

The objective of the following paper is to present the UERJ/Fiocruz extension program called “Literary History in citizenship education in peripheral territories – articulations with the Brazilian Periphery of Letters (PBL)” and to problematize the idea, and the crises, of the concept of universality. The work of Antonio Candido has served as a basis to defend literature as a universal concept. However, several authors have seriously questioned the practices and meanings that bolster the concept of “universal”, and others that come from it, like “humanity” and “civilization”. Consequently, there has been a destabilization of these concepts based on the idea of universality, compelling us to think once again about the universal right to literature and its social functions, making it worth asking what the consequences are for literary history and with this right, in such an epistemological framework, and in search for answers with PBL itself.