Paisagem mítica como campo de forças: geoestratégias e geotáticas de simbolização na América Latina (2000-2023)

Abstract

This thesis investigates the political and symbolic use of monumental and ritualistic imagery in the Brazilian Bicentennial (1822-2022), which compose Latin American urban landscapes. In other words, this research addresses a theoretical-epistemological theme whose empirical and documentary elements become the driving forces of the methodology from an approach that involves elements of cultural and political geography. The thesis proposes that Iberian colonization in Latin America was a process of spatial domination with contemporary imagistic ramifications—both material and immaterial—that are spatially and strategically reinforced in the rituals of civic commemorations of independence movements. Thus, our main objective is to analyze, based on the concepts of geostrategy and geotactics, the process of symbolization in the formation of mythical landscapes. The temporal focus of this research concentrates on spatiotemporal, material, and immaterial phenomena of the first twenty-four years of the present century (2000-2023), where the symbolic power of political-cultural monuments is renewed with the arrival of dates. In addition, civic, political, and social events such as protests and demonstrations of enormous symbolic power are also part of the investigative interest, especially when they tactically appropriate fixed spatial elements. In the theoretical- methodological scope, the aim is to analyze geostrategies of symbolization and their respective geotactics in the formation of mythical landscapes, thus allowing for an analysis of the relations between subjects, landscapes, and power projects. To this end, the theory of Symbolic Vectors (Oliveira, 2017) is used coupled with the discussion of spatial marks and traces (Veschambre, 2008) and the political uses of landscape (Duncan; Barnes, 1992; Berque, 2014); the semiotic debate on iconography and the production of meanings and significances from images is one of the theoretical pillars of this thesis (Didi-Huberman, 2013; Santaella, 2012). From the instrumental point of view of research, the media force projected by journalistic vehicles becomes central, considering that this language is a producer of meanings and an instrument of power and counterpower in contemporary times (Steinberger, 2003). A mythical landscape is defined as the symbolic and geostrategic writing of urban images such as obelisks, towers, statues, festivals, forts, holidays, rituals, celebrations, etc. In contemporary times, a narrative is observed, constituted, among many elements, by the media-communicational power that is constantly updated, traversing space and time as it absorbs the urban landscape and mythifies it. Thus, ideomaps (cognitive cartography) are used to represent forms of religious symbolism, political civicism, and heroic patriotism as geographical and strategic dimensions—hence geostrategic—that construct imaginaries and manage spaces in national projects. Therefore, a reflection on the marks of colonization and its imagistic-landscape ramifications in Latin America is demonstrated from the two cities investigated empirically—Rio de Janeiro/RJ and São Paulo/SP—, from specific examples in other Brazilian realities, and from an incursion through the Theory of Social Representations (Moscovici, 2008) with subjects inserted in journalistic production in Brazil in order to also discuss how subjects directly linked to the constructions of meaning of the world see the processes investigated in this research.