Disjunctures, Discontinuities, Disintegrations: Modernity and Modernization in João Almino's decadent Brasília

• In Event: Estéticas de la disidencia: cuerpos, sujetos e identidades en las trasformaciones del campo cultural en el Cono Sur

Abstract

Following its inauguration as the first city in its entirety to be declared a UN World Heritage Site in 1987, the test of time and the many road bumps of modernization have led to a physical transformation of Brazil's capital city, Brasília. This has prompted United Nations experts to revisit the site in 2012 in order to discuss its potential placement on a list of World Heritage Sites in Danger. What was once a seemingly blank slate for visions of development and modernity quickly began to mirror socio-economic challenges in Brazil-- through poverty, income disparity, racial tensions and urban and peripheral violence. Following Henri Lefevbre's model that all physical spaces are inherently made and unmade, Brasília's residents have effectively altered the city to meet their own needs. This spatial change reproduces the disjointedness between envisioned modernity and modernization, as posited by numerous Latin American thinkers including Néstor García Canclini. In this paper, I examine the tension between these two concepts, as seen in the carved out spaces of humanity (through bodies and subjectivies) in Brasília. In order to do so, I look at two works by João Almino, Idéias para Onde Passar o Fim do Mundo (1987) and As Cinco Estações do Amor (2008), both of which form part of his Brasília Quintet. I posit that Almino constructs narrative time and space in such a way that allows him to reveal disjunctures and contact zones between the material world and human protagonists, thereby scrutinizing (and extending) Brazil's original vision of modernity.

Author

• Cecily C Raynor, McGill University