Território e subjetividade: uma pesquisa sobre a comunidade de pescadores do Jaraguá

Abstract

This research sought to problematize the relation between territoriality and subjectivities, considering the historical and political context of the Jaraguá Fishermen's Community. During the last 20 years, this community has been the target of a conflict regarding the right to remain in the territory where it was located for more than 40 years, in the Jaraguá neighborhood, in the city of Maceió-AL. Conflict that resulted, in June of 2015, in the eviction of the families who lived and worked there, and in the demolition of the community’s physical space. In view of these events, it was considered important to record the life stories and memories of the inhabitants of the old community through their narratives, seeking to know their belonging relations with the territory, as well as discussing how the change of territory and the demolition of the old community has affected the life of these people in aspects such as work, social relations and cultural practices. Thus, we consider the relation between territoriality and production of subjectivities from the following aspects: a) elements of the history of community and people's lives; b) the territory studied from the ways of living, inhabiting and working and c) territory conceived as a space for the production of modes of subjectivation. Located in the field of Social Psychology, this research starts from the dialogue with the thought of authors such as Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Walter Benjamin, highlighting the importance of working with the stories and memories of the participant subjects assuming the ethical and political commitment of a narrative that is concerned with remembering and telling the stories of these fishing workers who had their voices ignored or even silenced in various spaces. Therefore, we point to the importance of thinking and producing knowledge and intervention practices that echo these voices without letting them fall into oblivion. We understand territory and subjectivities from their relation of co-production, i.e., they are constituted in the measure of their relations. We comprehend the territory as a place of life, production of subjectivities, culture and social relations between subjects, at the time when these people produce and institute the territory by inhabiting it. In it, there is a possible story from the remembering. Thus, from the mentioned authors, we take memory as an important key to analyze and problematize social conditions, analyzing practices that, in the name of progress, undo social relations in a violent way by disregarding the cultural and memory production of the subjects and their territories of habitation.