Engaging, being, political

Abstract

This paper analyzes the struggle around dispossession in the context of the Belo Monte Dam in the Brazilian Amazon. The construction consortium dominated the process of dispossession with politics of non-recognition that assigned valuelessness to local ways of life and concepts of property. Aggravated by the prevalence of clientelistic relations that blocked formal negotiation opportunities, this induced a process of fragmentation and the precarization of many residents. However, some residents organized and offered resistance. Through performative acts of citizenship, they constituted themselves as political subjects and transformed the conflict into an agonistic struggle. Nevertheless, they continued to be dominated by the consortium and in their resistance forcedly legitimized its politics of displacement. This paper argues that consideration of the way politics, people and their struggle around dispossession and citizenship are entangled with the symbolic order is crucial for understanding and promoting political struggles and advancing agonistic theory.