TOCANTINENSE OR GOIANO? A QUESTION OF IDENTITY

Abstract

The proposal of this work consists of a discussion about the tocantinense identity that was established politically from the division of the State of Goiás in 1988, when the State of Tocantins was created. The purpose of this is to understand how this identity was legitimized, since the people of that territory already had an established identity, that is, what arguments were used to convince a people to give up a secularly formed identity. Initially, it presents the concept of identity, clarifying the various senses that this theme ends, taking into account the individual, social and cultural aspects. To that end, the definitions of identity and cultural identity were based, mainly based on Hall (2006, 2011), Silva (2011) and Woorward (2011). Then, for a broader understanding of the issue, the concepts of territory and place and their influence on the identity formation of individuals and social groups were also presented. From the theoretical discussions, it is inferred that cultural identity is constituted through symbolic representations, that is, it is not something acquired biologically. It is also formed by speeches or acts of speech. In this sense, tocantinense identity is constituted by means of the political-ideological discourses that fomented the creation of the state of Tocantins in the course of at least a century of history. These discourses have aroused in the collective imagination the feeling of belonging to the place, legitimizing the new identity and denying the other, the Goiana.