ABSTRACT
This chapter zooms into Lisbon before and after the 2008 economic crisis. It first discusses José Saramago’s A Caverna, a novel that contraposes artisan craftsmanship and artistic expertise in relation to globalization. Saramago’s novel is useful here to understand the dynamics of artistic valorization and expertise that were behind the differentiation between cultural production and social transformation in post-dictatorial Portugal. Kalaf Epalanga’s Os brancos também sabem dançar, a partially autofictional novel written by the leader of the popular band Buraka Som Sistema, provides a relevant counterpart of this process, arguing that the Afro-Portuguese characters featured in Epalanga’s novel advance alternative ways of mobilizing collaborative cultural production in order to escape from the commodification of diversity within a supposedly multicultural Lisbon. The legacy of Portuguese imperialism is examined here side by side the use of racial difference in the marketization of Lisbon.
