Between Takes and Edits: media-activism against the terror politics in Brazil

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Drawing on my research covering the struggles of Vila Autódromo, a small favela in Rio de Janeirothreatened with removal in the 1990s, I aim to expand my investigation into how new mediatechnologies can change and reshape political participation in contemporary times. The mediums ofvideo and photography and also the Internet shaped Vila Autódromo's politics of resistance and ourcollaboration methods to produce impactful audiovisual materials not only for the online campaignsagainst eviction, but also for our defence material in the public civil suits. The mainstream media haslong been used as a weapon of marginalisation and discrimination, depicting black and low-incomepopulations through stereotyping in films and television, but the people of Vila Autódromo were able touse it to their advantage to empower themselves and overturn such images and narratives.The story of Vila Autódromo echoes that of many other communities in Brazil and worldwide who havefought against ethnic, racial and social cleansing, and even cultural and physical genocide. The politicalrifts and opposing moral positions of those who wanted the evictions/demolitions and those who werefighting them, with the constantly shifting battle lines, will resonate not only with other places goingthrough similar struggles worldwide, but also other urban struggles against capitalist expansion. Thepervasiveness of the city's actions - analysed through the urban expulsions in Rio - mirrors other subtleforms of authoritarianism, which seem to be rising exponentially in the current times.In my future publications and research activities, my aim is to widen the focus by exploring how forcedevictions and expropriations have been taking place worldwide under different social and politicalcircumstances as part of a global phenomenon of urban expulsion driven by neo-liberal capitalistexpansion.The impact on the countries of the so-called Global South is far more severe given the daily struggle ofmany parts of society to put bread on their tables and keep a roof over their heads. In the case of Brazil,democracy has always worked selectively upon different populations. Since the redemocratisation of thecountry in the mid-1980s, the number of racialised killings, the so-called 'genocide against urban blackpopulations', has increased, along with the number of homicides targeting rural, indigenous and quilombolacommunities struggling for survival and the preservation of their lands. Furthermore, the limited access topublic health, security, education, culture, urban mobility and employment demonstrates the grossinequality among the different social classes in Brazil. The combination of the economic crisis that startedin 2014 and the recent radicalisation of Brazilian politics has only served to aggravate the project ofBrazilian democracy, with its worst signs of breakdown among the most vulnerable sectors of society.However, for the black and poor populations of Brazilian communities, the urban struggles for life andimprovement of their life conditions have always been part of their narrative.While networking and making my research findings widely public, I intend to expand the interdisciplinarydebate initiated in my thesis about how social scientists can effectively collaborate with the communitiesthey engage with during and after fieldwork, especially in the context of human rights violations and stateabuse.