Abstract
Abstract The purpose of this article is to trace the paths of “destruction” of the Praia de Iracema, in Fortaleza, which have been documented from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. It is inspired on my own ethnographic study conducted between 2015 and 2017 with transnational missionary projects that confront “sexual crimes” in Fortaleza. The article examines the dual process of selective use of scientific epistemology and the brutal crushing of other epistemologies in their relation with the recurring endings of the Praia de Iracema. Crossing knowledge from anthropology, geology, history, politics, and physics, I sought to perceive how the entanglements of agencies between humans and non-humans generate the eternal return of the Praia de Iracema, bringing to light the irrational rationalities of humanist times.
Highlights
The purpose of this article is to trace the paths of “destruction” of the Praia de Iracema, in Fortaleza, which have been documented from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century
I learned about the sociotechnical processes of “destruction” of the Praia de Iracema a few years ago when I studied them to analyze the transformations in international tourism on the Praia de Iracema beach, a research field in my doctoral thesis Da violência ao amor: economias sexuais entre “crimes” e “resgates” em Fortaleza, [From violence to love: sexual economies between “crimes” and “rescues” in Fortaleza], supervised by Adriana Piscitelli, supported by CAPES and Fapesp (Processo 2015/13332-7) and defended in the Graduate Program in the Social Sciences at Unicamp, in 2018
Through an ethnography realized between 2015 and 2017, accompanying missionary projects to confront “sexual crimes” in Fortaleza, I found that the most recent discourse about the “destruction” of the Praia de Iracema, relating to meetings between “gringos” [men] and “nativas” [women] that were classified as “programs” [tricks] at the end of the decade of 2000, involved a re-editing of an older narrative about love, sex, money, progress and decaying buildings that marked the history of the neighborhood
Summary
They learned vanity from the sea; isn’t the sea the peacock of peacocks? (Nietzsche, [1883]2008, p. 101). Through an ethnography realized between 2015 and 2017, accompanying missionary projects to confront “sexual crimes” in Fortaleza, I found that the most recent discourse about the “destruction” of the Praia de Iracema, relating to meetings between “gringos” [men] and “nativas” [women] that were classified as “programs” [tricks] at the end of the decade of 2000, involved a re-editing of an older narrative about love, sex, money, progress and decaying buildings that marked the history of the neighborhood. The chronology of the Praia de Iracema usually begins in the 1920s, when the beach was removed from its “bucolic” state considered “original” and began to be frequented by the city’s elites In this period some “palacetes” [mansions] were built that underwrote the “beauty of the place” and its availability for the installation of “progress” (Benevides, 2003). The beach was ravished by a violent process of erosion and flooding provoked by the advance of the sea over loves, large homes and dreams of development (Maia, Jimenez, et al, 1998)
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