Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Amazonian Theater of Cruelty

2011; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 101; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00045608.2011.579539

1467-8306

Robert Walker, Cynthia Simmons, Stephen Aldrich, Stephen G. Perz, Eugênio Arima, Marcellus M. Caldas,

Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research

Abstract This article deploys the "Theater of Cruelty," articulated by the French surrealist Antonin Artaud, as a conceptual heuristic to explicate the empirical world of contemporary Amazonia, in particular the "South of Pará," a site of land war and forest destruction, which the Theater of Cruelty posits as a single dramatic event. We pursue this explication via direct physical immersion, in the form of a travelogue following State Road PA-150 from Marabá to Eldorado dos Carajás, the scene of a massacre of nineteen land reform activists, shot down by Brazilian military police in collusion with the landed elite in 1996. Along the way, we have occasion to encounter the land reform movements and the forces of repression, which we depict both descriptively and theoretically, using our field trip as a point of departure for philosophical elaboration. To this end, we activate Artaud's "Theater of Cruelty" to disclose the nature of violent conflict in the region. We suggest that theater, more generally, provides structure for cruel performance, and that violent land conflict, together with forest destruction, constitutes a predictable tragedy of theatrical events. In other words, violent land conflict in Amazônia, with all its terrible implications for people and environment, can be grasped as a theatrical structure, with philosophic and material consequences for mind and body. Thus, we articulate the development discourse of Amazônia as a violent, existential game, not a narrative of disembodied forces. En este artículo se despliega el "Teatro de la Crueldad," articulado por el surrealista francés Antonin Artaud, como recurso heurístico conceptual con el cual explicar el empírico mundo de la Amazonia contemporánea, en particular el "Sur de Pará," un sitio de guerra por la tierra y destrucción de la selva, que el Teatro de la Crueldad retrata como un evento dramático individual. Buscamos esta explicación por medio de la inmersión física directa, a la manera de una representación de viaje siguiendo la Carretera Estatal PA-150 de Marabá a Eldorado dos Carajás, que fuera la escena de la masacre de diecinueve activistas de la reforma agraria, fusilados en 1996 por la policía militar brasileña confabulada con la élite terrateniente. En el recorrido tuvimos ocasión de encontrar los movimientos de reforma agraria y las fuerzas de la represión, que nosotros pintamos tanto descriptiva como teóricamente, utilizando nuestro viaje de campo como punto de partida para elaboración filosófica. Con tal propósito, activamos el "Teatro de la Crueldad" de Artaud, para destapar la naturaleza violenta del conflicto de esta región. Sugerimos que el teatro, en sentido más genérico, suministra la estructura para la actuación de lo cruel, y que el violento conflicto por la tierra, a la par con la destrucción de la selva, constituye una tragedia predecible de eventos teatrales. En otras palabras, el conflicto violento por la tierra en Amazonia, con todas sus terribles implicaciones para gente y medio ambiente, puede aprehenderse como una estructura teatral, con consecuencias filosóficas y materiales para mente y cuerpo. Así, pues, articulamos el discurso del desarrollo en Amazonia como un juego existencial violento y no como narrativa de fuerzas incorpóreas. Key Words: AmazonArtauddeforestationland reformtipping point关键词: 亚马逊阿尔托毁林土地改革临界点Palabras clave: AmazonasArtauddeforestaciónreforma agrariael punto clave Acknowledgments We acknowledge National Science Foundation support from BCS-0522062: Brazil's Direct Action Land Reform Movement, Environmental Impacts and Socio-spatial Dynamics, and from BCS-0620384: Globalization, Deforestation, and the Livestock Sector in the Brazilian Amazon. The views expressed belong to the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation. We wish to extend special thanks to our friends in the South of Pará. MST activists were also welcoming, both in Marabá and at the land reform settlement, 17 de Abril, on the outskirts of Eldorado dos Carajás. Joshua Stevens at Michigan State University translated our concepts of place and time into graphic imagery that enhanced the final product, and the review process of the journal improved the coherence of our writing, as always. We are particularly grateful to Audrey Kobayashi for her encouragement and for providing us with considerable editorial license in developing the manuscript as we saw fit. It is important to note that our use of photographs depicting the region's violence came only after a thoughtful discussion by several members of the "People, Place and Region" section of the editorial board, who expressed divergent opinions about their contribution to the text. We take full responsibility for the final decision to use them and hope the readership understands that our motivation was not to sensationalize the issues addressed but to provide visual intensification for text-bound description. The photo credits for the compass figure are as follows: north image, Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images; east image, Antonio Scorza/AFP/Getty Images; south image, Sebastiao Salgado/Amazonas/Contact Press Images; west image, AP Photo/O Estado de Tapajos/Agencia Estado. Notes 1. Readers can find useful background on the Amazon Land War in Simmons et al. (2007) Simmons, C. S., Walker, R., Arima, E. Y., Aldrich, S. P. and Caldas, M. M. 2007. The Amazon Land War in the South of Pará. The Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 97(3): 567–92. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar].