XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Struggle as temporal experience: Aesthetic and social dimensions of life in the MST

• In Event: 40 years of Sem Terra: Ethnographic perspectives on the significance of the Landless Workers Movement's struggle

Abstract

In 2011, Naomi Klein was not alone when she commented positively on the nascent Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampment in contrast to the anti-globalization protests of a decade earlier. Klein placed emphasis on the taking of space and the need for a “fixed target” (Klein 2011) noting how OWS would have “time to put down roots, which makes it a lot harder to sweep them away, even if they get kicked out of one physical space” (Ibid.). But fifty-nine days later, the OWS encampment was over and other Occupy encampments around the world were dismantled as they lost momentum and faded from the public consciousness. Beyond the ephemeral hyperbole of the mass media, Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement has truly taken root over the last 40 years and its continued existence is at once a victory and also an invitation to consider the contradictions that underpin its constant unfolding. In this paper, I argue that the actions of MST members point to the kind of movement they want to lead Brazil in the quest for social justice. Through a particular form of longitudinal struggle that brings aesthetic and social dimensions together, members contest the normalized and eschew a linear progression toward victory, seeking instead to articulate an agrarian reform in small spaces at a community level. From within a wider structure, such actions are life changing and immediate, but they are not only personal: in their resonance and recognition of the complex relations which bind people, they articulate a fundamental transformation of the kind of movement the MST is in this moment and will continue to be in the years to come, already present with us now.

Author

• Alex Ungprateeb Flynn, UCLA