utopianism #1

 

"Utopianism is the general label for a number of different ways of dreaming or thinking about, describing or attempting to create a better society" (REP). 

In EdC's Notas para a vida no LIMIAR (2022), utopianism is a way of dreaming with a life "sem o capitalismo," that is, a life in which we no longer live inside this "cadáver" that "se move sugando nossas vidas, nosso passado, nossas palavras."

This kind of utopianism is vital in a period in which "the future has become a kind of menace," as Franco Berardi puts it, because the only thing "the future" evokes is the seemingly inevitable deterioration of an already catastrophic present. Not surprisingly, our relationship to this "future" is ruled by fear: "O medo do futuro se alastra," says one of the actors in the prologue of Notas.

How do we try to "reverter" this "cancelamento do futuro," and, what's more, to "arrancar alegria ao futuro," and not only fear?

To engage in utopianism is to engage in a process of "tenciona[mento] do futuro," instilling it with the tension of alternatives and the joyful possibility of the end of capitalism (not the end of the world but the beginning of life): "Estamos no limiar: ou vamos superar nosso modo de vida ou o exterminismo do presente já é o nosso futuro."

saudade of (not-yet) lost futures

Notas para a vida no LIMIAR (2022), photo by Sérgio Fernandes.

I'm trying to wrap my head around two phrases from EdC's Utopia da Memória (2019). 

The first is "o futuro morto bem atrás." How can the future lie behind us (rather than ahead of us)? One of the things that make UdM so striking is that it's permeated with such instances of temporal disorientation. From our perspective, the future is by definition that which hasn't come yet; so how can it already be dead and behind us?

Mark Fisher (via Franco "Bifo" Berardi) is helpful here, inviting us to think of "o futuro" not as a direction but as the refusal of what Fisher termed "capitalist realism," according to which "there is no alternative" to the catastrophe that is (neoliberal) capitalism. In other words, "o futuro" is the (sometimes faltering) conviction that there has to be alternatives to this cruel and unjust present. If we accept the "realistic" perspective of "capitalist realism" -- "reality is the way it is" and will inevitably continue to be "the way it is," so "there is no use in fighting" (the "neoliberal fatalism" that Paulo Freire fiercely denounced) -- then the future is dead behind us even though we keep moving forward in the direction of something that can only be an incresingly catastrophic version of the present.

It's this "cancelamento do futuro" (as EdC puts it alluding to Berardi and Fisher) that we desperately need to reverse. Or, to stay with the image of UdM, what we need to do is restore a dead future to life. (Here it's impossible not to think of Fisher's writings on "hauntology;" the future may be dead behind us, but doesn't its spectre haunt us today?)

The other phrase is "saudade do que deveria ter sido." This is another instance of disorientation. We typically think of "saudade" as a longing for something or someone that was and no longer is. In this sense, we may feel "saudade" of a future that once lived and now is dead. "Saudade" thus may be how we relate to this dead future; we long for it (even, or particularly those of us who have been born under "capitalist realism"), which is why it haunts us and why we refuse not to try to restore it to life.

But how does one feel "saudade" of something that never was, something (in the past) that should have been but wasn't? For instance, UdM seems saturated with a "saudade" of Canudos. The "mundo utópico" of Canudos was after much resistance eventually destroyed by government forces, but what if it hadn't been? What other futures could this past have opened up to? Is this what Fisher means by "lost futures"? Is "saudade do que deveria ter sido" our deep longing for such "lost futures"? Like "o futuro," do these "lost futures" lie dead behind us?

"Saudade do que deveria" -- and thus poderia -- "ter sido" is a way of relating to pasts and their "lost futures," and of relating to our own moment as haunted both by the spectres of "lost futures" and of "the future" itself, the very conviction that what we call "the present" is open to non-catastrophic, non-capitalist futures that are never lost in advance. Our "saudade" of "lost futures," and of the loss of the future we sometimes seem to accept as irreversible, may be key to the task of restoring the future to life.

The "Revolução Popular" of 2118-19, which is mentioned in UdM and haunts the future of 2062 in Notas para a vida no LIMIAR, may be understood as an act of restoring the future to life (rather than of predicting that a particular event will take place at a particular point in time) by announcing (in the Freirean sense of the term) a not-yet lost future in which capitalism has been overthrown, a future we can feel "saudade" of in the sense of a fierce longing for what poderá ser.

arrancar alegria ao futuro

 

 

"Ter medo do futuro se transformou em algo comum e a necessidade de reverter o cancelamento do futuro se transformou em tarefa de parte significativa da sociedade" (Estudo de Cena).

"O medo do futuro se alastra, a necessidade de arrancar alegria ao futuro nos atravessa" (Notas para a vida no LIMIAR).

In the "Prólogo Documental" of Notas para a vida no LIMIAR (2022), the actors make a series of statements about our current situation:

"Diante dos nossos olhos se aprofundam crises financeiras, ecológicas, viróticas, socias. Paira no presente uma sensação, difusa, de uma crise profunda e ampla."

"Vivemos dentro de um cadáver chamado Capitalismo, que se move sugando nossas vidas, nosso passado, nossas palavras."

And finally: "Estamos no limiar: ou vamos superar nosso modo de vida ou o exterminismo do presente já é o nosso futuro."

Our fear of the future comes from a strong feeling -- a certainty, almost -- that we won't overcome our mode of life and that the exterminism of the present already is our future. 

Notas para a vida no LIMIAR takes place in a dystopian future that is not so distant nor so different from our present. After seeing the piece, an audience member commented that if this is what "viver sem o capitalismo" looks like, he'd rather continue to live inside this life-sucking "cadáver." What he didn't consider is that the dystopian future of the play is not a future "sem o capitalismo" but with it. If this future feels like "o fim do mundo," it's not because capitalism has come to an end but because it hasn't.

But there are other, more hopeful glimpses of the future. For instance, we hear of a anti-capitalist "comunidade" that has disappeared in the year 2058, whose insurrectionary "ditado popular" was, "Não precisamos salvar o capitalismo, precisamos nos salvar dele."

We also hear of the "revolta de 2062," in which a woman rebel "enforcou um soldado com a alça de sua blusa."

We don't know what happens after this revolt of 2062, but it may be the start of a series of uprisings that eventually leads to the Revolução Popular about which we hear in Utopia da Memória (2019), the group's previous work. There, someone from the future recalls "janeiro de 2119, quando a gente comemorou nas ruas os primeiros 100 dias da Revolução Popular."

In a letter dated "2134, ano 15 da Revolução Popular," we learn that a lot of things we think can't be abolished -- "As cercas, os latifúndios, as muralhas, as propriedades, as fortunas, o dinheiro" -- "não existem mais." Perhaps most significantly, we learn that "hoje . . . quando vamos dormir não tememos o amanhã."

 

In Pedagogia da indignação (2000), Freire wrote that "uma das bonitezas do anúncio profético está em que não anuncia o que virá necessariamente, mas o que pode vir, ou não. O seu não é um anúncio fatalista ou determinista. Na real profecia, o futuro não é inexorável, é problemático. Há diferentes possibilidades de futuro."

To me, the act of imagining the Revolução Popular of 2118 is an example of prophetic-utopian annunciation. It's not that this will necessarily happen, but that it could -- and this is the point. "A realidade está grávida de possibilidades," we hear in the prologue of Notas para a vida no LIMIAR, which is to say it is open to "the possibility -- though not the inevitability -- of catastrophes on the one hand and great emancipatory movements on the other" (Löwy, Fire Alarm 110). 

The anunciation of instances of uprising like the revolt of 2062 and the Revolução Popular of 2118 is not meant to foretell but to "tencionar o futuro," opening it up to alternatives -- "ou vamos superar nosso modo de vida ou o exterminismo do presente já é o nosso futuro."

 

"Utopianism is the general label for a number of different ways of dreaming or thinking about, describing or attempting to create a better society" (REP). 

In Utopia da Memória and Notas para a vida no LIMIAR, utopianism is a way of dreaming about "o fim do capitalismo" so as to "reverter o cancelamento do futuro," and, what's more, "arrancar alegria ao futuro" by infusing it with the possibility of a life without capitalism.

reinventamos nosso presente, o futuro de vocês

At the end of Utopia da Memória (2019), a "Mensageira" delivers a series of "fragmentos de correspondência" to the actors. The last of these fragments is addressed to Juliana Liegel. 

"Filha," it begins, "antes de tudo uma pergunta: ao caminhar pela rua ainda sente na boca o gosto amargo da vida?" 

Since the addresser refers to Liegel as "filha" and asks if she still feels the bitter taste of life in the mouth, we assume this is a "mensagem ao futuro" like the ones audience members are invited to leave at the end of the play, which "serão gravados e enterrados para serem desvelados daqui 100 anos em 2120."

The mother's following words complicate this: "Esta é a minha lembrança do passado, mas o amargo da boca alimentou a revolta."

The mother's question now seems rhetorical: she knows that to her daughter the bitter taste of life is not yet a memory of the past (as it is to her) but a taste she still feels in the mouth.

It's as if she wants to assure her daughter that this bitter taste will one day be a memory of the past (if not to her, to those who will come after her), and, just as importantly, that it is food for revolt.

"Hoje," the mother goes on, "posso dizer que quando vamos dormir não tememos o amanhã. Nossas barricadas floriram, das sementes germinaram comida e das bocas coloridas nascem sorrisos. Reinventamos nosso presente, o futuro de vocês."

The mother's "today" is not our past but our future. This "fragment of correspondence" is not from the past to the future but to the past from a revolutionary future -- more specifically, "2134, ano 15 da Revolução Popular."

Then how can the letter be from "Sua mãe"?

Earlier in the play, the same actor, Juliana Liegel, recalls the year 1996 when "Eu vi minha mãe chorando em frente à televisão que noticiava o massacre de Eldorado do Carajás, onde 19 trabalhadores Sem Terra foram assassinados pela Polícia." 

Are these two mothers the same? Has the mother died and been reborn (the same way that "Canudos morre e renasce, morre e renasce")?

Either way, when she reads the letter out loud, talking as if she were the addresser, the actor takes on the role of this mother from her future. 

The more I read and think about this letter, the less the distinctions between "mãe" and "filha," and between "o povo daqui" and "o povo daí" (as the mother refers to those of 2134 and those of 2019), seem to matter.

We would like to be assured that there is no reason to fear tomorrow, as we so strongly do these days, or at least feel that we can reinvent our present, so that the present of those who will come after us will be different.

We would also like to one day send this letter to those who came before us and whose future we inhabit, letting them know that their struggles were not in vain.

utopismo da memória?

 

"Utopianism is the general label for a number of different ways of dreaming or thinking about," "envisaging," "depicting," "describing or attempting to create a better society," often "as a way of achieving significant social change" (REP).

How can we formulate a utopismo da memória as a way of dreaming about a better society?

At the heart of Utopia da Memória (2019) is the act of "criar correpondências."

In some cases, one of the actors creates a "correpondência" between two "fragmentos," such as an image of the Monumento das Castanheiras Mortas and the day "Eu vi minha mãe chorando em frente à televisão que noticiava o massacre de Eldorado do Carajás," or an image of an unspecified street protest and "janeiro de 2119, quando a gente comemorou nas ruas os primeiros 100 dias da Revolução Popular."

In other cases, the "correpondências" are established by "fragmentos" from one generation to another, such as the fictional letters from Maria Bonita "para vocês que habitam o meu futuro" and from a mother in 2134 (the 15th anniversary of the Revolução Popular) to her daugther in 2019 (a hundred years away from this revolution), or the messages left by members of the audience "aos que virão depois de nós" (to borrow from Brecht), which will be stored and opened "daqui 100 anos, em 2120." 

How can we elaborate a utopismo da memória as a way of using such fragments as links to create "una corriente" between past, present, and future generations (to borrow the image used by Valentina Rodríguez in the documentary Nostalgia de la luz)?