Legacies and memories of violence in &lt;i&gt;Becos da memória&lt;/i&gt;

Leila Lehnen

doi:10.5007/2175-7917.2019v24n1p173

Abstract

Este ensaio reflete sobre como o conceito de “violência lenta” (slow violence) (Nixon, 2011) estrutura a narrativa do romance Becos da memória (2006), de Conceição Evaristo. Nixon define a “violência lenta” como um processo diacrônico de marginalização que afeta principalmente grupos nas margens econômicas e minorias raciais. A violência lenta é também, segundo Nixon, muitas vezes menos visível. Ela se manifesta em diferentes esferas, incluindo a depredação e a marginalização ambiental. É a faceta ambiental que distingue a violência lenta da violência estrutural, ainda que ambas expressões intersectem. O texto de Evaristo revela não somente quais são as consequência da violência estrutural (Galtung, 1969), mas também como este tipo de violência influencia a experiência espacial e, pelo tanto, a vivência cotidiana, de populações pobres e racializadas. Nesse sentido, o romance de Evaristo aborda os efeitos da violência lenta sobre comunidades marginalizadas. Dessa forma, Becos da memória traz à tona, a confluência entre meio ambiente e a experiência de vida de população social e espacialmente marginalizadas.

Highlights

This essay examines how the concept of “slow violence” (NIXON, 2011) appears Conceição Evaristo’s novel Becos da memória (Alleys of memory 2006)
Evaristo’s text confronts the reader with the consequences of structural violence (GALTUNG, 1969), and shows how this violence structures the experience of spatiality of impoverished racial minorities and, as a result, impacts the everyday lives of these groups
Becos da memória brings to light the confluence between environment and the lived experience of subjects who live both at the social and spatial margins

Summary

Introduction

This essay examines how the concept of “slow violence” (NIXON, 2011) appears Conceição Evaristo’s novel Becos da memória (Alleys of memory 2006). Evaristo’s text confronts the reader with the consequences of structural violence (GALTUNG, 1969), and shows how this violence structures the experience of spatiality of impoverished racial minorities and, as a result, impacts the everyday lives of these groups In this manner, Becos da memória brings to light the confluence between environment and the lived experience of subjects who live both at the social and spatial margins. To Bullard, who examined the connection between environmental depredation and Afro-American communities in the Southern United States, Nixon employs the lens of slow violence to look into how marginalized populations are affected by different types of environmental violence, including forced removals to build oil pipelines and mega dams. He observes that: Forced removal involves agonizing adjustments to bleak accommodation, unfamiliar ecologies, and typically barren, hostile terrain, it involves the additional challenge posed by temporal violence: how to survive in a truncated, severed present, torn by involuntary displacement from the numinous fabric that had woven extended meaning from time-in-place. (NIXON, 2011, p. 162)

Material and Affective Environments

Conclusion

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