Do Acontecimento

At a time of calculation, rules and prevention all of a sudden emerges the unexpected, something that disrupts the course of events and threatens the flow of life. In a sort of paradox, the more one anticipates the accident, the more catastrophic and unmanageable it is when it occurs. It is understandable that in this respect the notion of Event, contingent and unpredictable, has been gaining ground to account for forces that exceed historical forms, either coming from Nature, like a catastrophe, or from within the history we make, widespread as a fire or an epidemic. There’s a certain amount of panic in the face of excessive force and the weakness of forms, even if a considerable part of human culture has been based on the wait for a decisive event, a revolution, through which peace or justice may triumph once and for all. Some bare witness to it, others announce it, and others lose all hope tired of waiting. Only art, thought and technique are able to respond to the Event and create the labyrinth where—much like the ancient Minotaur—we can be close to it and its power without the illusion of cancelling or controlling it.


José Bragança de Miranda has a doctorate in communication sciences from the Nova University of Lisbon (1990), having made a habilitation thesis in theory of culture (2000) at the same university. He is an associate professor at the communication sciences department of the Nova University of Lisbon and has been an invited full professor at the Lisbon Lusófona University since 1992. He has been teaching in the fields of theory of culture and contemporary arts, media theory and cyberculture. He is a researcher at the Instituto de Comunicação da Nova (ICNOVA). He wrote several books, among which: Analítica da Actualidade, Teoria da Cultura, Corpo e Imagem or Política e Modernidade.