reinventar o passado e inventar o futuro

 

Utopia da Memória (2019), screenshot from video recording.

 

"O teatro . . . nos proporciona a possibilidade de . . . fundir memória e imaginação -- que são dois processos psíquicos indissociáveis -- de, no presente, reinventar o passado e inventar o futuro" (Boal, Teatro Legislativo 44).

"[N]ão será [a memória] apenas um espaço onde a imaginação se exerce, onde organiza registros de emoções, pensamentos, sensações havidas, onde inventa o futuro e reinventa o passado? (34).

In the final scene of Utopia da Memória, each of the actors holds a photograph and shares what it reminds them of. One actor holds a photo of the Monumento das Castanheiras Mortas and says, "Esta foto me lembra o ano de 1996. 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. Alguns meses depois, na PUC de São Paulo, ela colaborou com uma exposição de fotos de Sebastião Salgado sobre o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, o MST." A photo of the monument to the landless workers who were murdered by the police on 17 April 1996 "lembra" the sight of the mother crying as she watched the news of the massacre on television.

Then, another actor holds a photo and says, "Esta foto me lembra janeiro de 2119, quando a gente comemorou nas ruas os primeiros 100 dias da Revolução Popular." Since there is no photo of this imagined future event, the group uses a photo of the actors Roberto Kroupa (who is holding the photo) and Juliana Liegel at one of the manifestações organized by the Frente Única da Cultura in São Paulo in 2017. It's as if the person we're hearing is an inhabitant of our distant future (he uses the subject "a gente" and the verb comemorar in the past tense), whose memory of this celebration is triggered by the photo. It doesn't really matter whether the photo has any direct relation to the Revolução Popular; it's a photo of people protesting in the streets -- and, it seems, celebrating (see 1:02:42 of the video) -- and thus it reminds him of the street celebration of the first hundred days of the Popular Revolution.

At the start and end of the play we're told by a messenger that "Utopia da Memória" is a place -- "Utopia da Memória / Parece que estamos no lugar certo" -- where we'll have to "juntar" or "fazer correspondências" between "fragmentos" "na imaginação." The preposition "na" suggests a notion of imagination as a space in which we can join seemingly disconnected fragments, including "fragmentos de memória." In the second quotation at the top, Boal refers to memory as "um espaço onde a imaginação se exerce, onde organiza registros de emoções, pensamentos, sensações havidas, onde inventa o futuro e reinventa o passado? (34). I find Boal's description (in the first quotation) of imagination and memory as "dois processos psíquicos indissociáveis" more helpful (4), as it invites us to think of the acts of imagining and remembering as (indissociable) forms of joining or making correspondences between fragments.

How do we join the photo of a past manifestação with what we're hearing about January 2119? We're told at the start of the play we'll have to join fragments, "na" or with the imagination, but also, "tragam junto suas memórias, elas serão necessariás." I may not know when or where the protest in the photo took place, but the photo "me lembra" when my partner and I marched across the Brooklyn Bridge chanting with hundreds, perhaps thousands of protestors all the way to Abolition Park (as the occupation at City Hall had been renamed) in the summer of 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd. The Revolução Popular of Utopia da Memória may never happen, but the photo "me lembra" that struggles for justice are happening and will continue to happen till "tudo seja diferente."

ainda sente na boca o gosto amargo da vida?

 

 

Utopia da Memória (2019), screenshot from video recording.

 

". . . then there is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Then our coming was expected on earth. Then, like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power on which the past has a claim. Such a claim cannot be settled cheaply" (Benjamin, Thesis II of "On the Concept of History").

"The defeated of June 1848 . . . await from us not just the remembrance of their suffering, but reparation for past injustices and the achievement of their social utopia" (Löwy, Fire Alarm 32).

 

The final part of Utopia da Memória is made up of four fictional letters delivered to the actors by a "Mensageira." The first three are sent by people from the past: the cangaceira Maria Bonita, murdered by the police on 28 July 1938; the funkeiro MC Daleste, murdered on 7 July 2013; and a soldado who participated in the massare of Canudos in 1896-7.

In the letter to the actor Carolina Maluf, Maria Bonita speaks to us "que habitam o meu futuro" from a time when "As cercas do latifúndio crescem e criam raízes," "O governo levanta a bandeira da 'ordem e progresso,'" and "O fascismo corre como serpente pelas ruas das cidades e pelas estradas e trilhas da caatinga." It's heartbreaking to hear of her "esperança que no século 21 tudo seja diferente" just a few days after Bolsonaristas stormed government buildings in Brasília in another demonstration that we live in a moment in the 21st century when fascism slithers like a serpent through Brazil and many other parts of the world. For us, inhabitants of her future at the start of 2023, the hope of Maria Bonita already begins to feel like a "saudade do que deveria ter sido" and was not. Her closing statement that "Esta carta" (like her esperança) "é para vocês que habitam o meu futuro" rings like a demand for us not only to remember the suffering of the dead but to stand up against fascism and do what we can to fulfill the longing of past generations -- of our generation -- for a future in which "tudo seja diferente."

The fourth and final letter, sent to the actor Juliana Liegel, is signed "Com amor, / Sua mãe" and dated "2134, ano 15 da Revolução Popular." It comes from a future moment in the 21st century in which the hope of Maria Bonita has been fulfilled and everything is different -- "As cercas, os latifúndios, as muralhas, as propriedades, as fortunas, o dinheiro... não existem mais. São fotos de Museu, é preciso lembrar. Aqui a memória é o combustível da revolução." It opens with a question: "ao caminhar pela rua ainda sente na boca o gosto amargo da vida?" The mother's question makes me think of "saudade do que deveria ter sido," and whether this yearning for what should have been is part of what leaves us walking the streets with a bitter taste in the mouth. Yes, we still feel it, hoping one day it will be a "lembrança do passado," as it has become to the mother; "mas," she assures us, however bitter this taste may be (she knows, she has felt it too), and however much we want to be rid of it, "o amargo da boca alimentou a revolta," which is why she seems to remember it fondly.

How can the actor's mother send her a letter from the year 2134? Is the mother an older version of the daughter sending a message to herself in the past (the same way audience members are invited at the of the play to send messages to the future), letting her younger self know that she won't have to taste "o gosto amargo da vida" forever in her mouth, at least not if she uses it to feed her spirit of revolt? In Thesis XII of "On the Concept of History," Benjamin claimed that the present "task of liberation" is carried out "in the name of generations of the downtrodden" (of those whose future we inhabit), and that those fighting against oppression "are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than the ideal of liberated grandchildren." The letter complicates Benjamin's formulation, for (chronologically speaking) it presents a descendant of the daughter (and of "o povo daí," as the author of the letter refers to the people of 2019) as her liberated ancestor. How is "o povo daqui" (of 2134), "que quando vamos dormir não tememos o amanhã," our ancestors and our descendants and ourselves all at the same time?

saudade do que deveria ter sido

 

 

Utopia da Memória (2019), photo by Fernando Solidade.

In the final part of Utopia da Memória, by the Brazilian theater group Estudo de Cena, a chorus repeats the phrase "saudade do que deveria ter sido."

According to the dictionary, saudade is a "Sentimento nostálgico e melancólico associado à recordação de pessoa ou coisa ausente, distante ou extinta, ou à ausência de coisas, prazeres e emoções experimentadas e já passadas, consideradas bens positivos e desejáveis."

Still according to the dictionary, saudade is also a type of song, a "Cantiga entoada por marinheiros em alto-mar." Perhaps an example is the song "Marinheiro Só," "uma cantiga de roda tradicional brasileira, que era cantada pelos pescadores e marinheiros, antes de deixarem suas casas e famílias para trás para embarcarem em seus ofícios pelos mares," which has been interpreted by artists such as Clementina de Jesus and Caetano Veloso.

In Utopia da Memória, the phrase "saudade do que deveria ter sido" is uttered by the chorus like a song (see 01:07:26), the word saudade pronounced slowly, marking its three syllables, followed by a brief pause before the rest of the phrase -- which derives its (perhaps melancholy) power from the sudden joining in of voices and the alliteration of the "d" sound (saudade do que deveria ter sido).

I can't stop thinking of this phrase. How can we feel saudade not of something that was (and no longer is) but of something that (could and) should have been but was not?

I'm reminded of a passage from Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch (to which I keep returning over and over again): "Capitalism was the counter-revolution that destroyed the possibilities that had emerged from the anti-feudal struggle -- possibilities, which, if realized, might have spared us the immense destruction of lives and the natural environment that has marked the advance of capitalist relations worldwide" (21). When I read this passage I feel saudade of these possibilities and what their realization "might have spared us."

"Saudade do que deveria ter sido;" saudade (like the utopia of the play's title) "made of" or "originated from" our memory of past unrealized possibilities? If we can feel "saudade do que deveria ter sido," can we feel "saudade do que não existiu [ainda]," a saudade made of or originated from our "memória do futuro"? "Qual a sua saudade do que não existiu? Qual a sua memória do futuro?," which perhaps are different ways of asking "Qual a sua Utopia?," the word utopia synonymous with "memory of the future" and the feeling of saudade (for what hasn't existed yet) it gives rise to. 

At one point in Utopia da Memória, one of the actors looks at a photograph (of a protest) and recalls "janeiro de 2119, quando a gente comemorou nas ruas os primeiros 100 dias da Revolução Popular." The actor could be a representative of "os que virão" after us, someone who inhabits our future (the same way that we, for Maria Bonita, are the ones "que habitam o meu futuro") and is remembering the celebration of the first hundred days of the Popular Revolution in January 2119, a hundred years after "janeiro de 2019," when "o atual presidente assinou o decreto que facilita a posse de armas no Brasil." For this comrade of a future generation, the celebration of the first hundred days of the revolution (and the revolution itself) is a memory of the past, but for us it's a memory of the future, of a "passado que virá." The actor gives us one answer to the question "Qual a sua Utopia," your "memória do futuro?" It's a popular revolution that would abolish "As cercas, os latifúndios, as muralhas, as propriedades, as fortunas, o dinheiro..."

I feel saudade of January 2119 when we'll fill the streets to celebrate the first hundred days of the Revolução Popular. Will this one day be someone else's "saudade do que deveria ter sido" and was not?

uma breve história do tempo

meu pai me deu esse livro num aniversário 

quando minha mãe e ele já eram separados

e eu vivia em outro país

 

meu pai e eu quase não nos falávamos

e ficamos três anos sem nos ver

 

ele não sabia o que me dar de aniversário

sabia que eu gostava de ler

então escolheu um livro 

que talvez tivesse algo a ver comigo

 

nunca li o livro 

e toda vez que o vejo na estante 

me sinto culpado

não sei porque lembrei disso

no dia em que a gente descobriu 

que a gravidez que tinha nos deixado tão felizes

era “inviável”

19 de agosto de 2022, 10:59

 

o destino dos que querem parar o tempo está traçado

mas não é irreversível

nosso destino é outro

um destino em aberto fruto do luto e da luta 

pelo sonho de um mundo sem capitalismo

um mundo em que mortos possam enfim descansar

em que vivos possam viver

e quem virá depois possa lembrar

que diante do ressurgimento do fascismo

nunca nos demos por vencidos ou aceitamos 

que estava acabado