A natureza do homem e a lama do desastre, o desastre do homem e a lama na natureza, a lama do homem e a natureza do desastre

Abstract

The study starts with the case of the socio-environmental crime-disaster caused by the rupture of the Fundão dam in the Rio Doce basin, on November 5, 2015, which the mining companies Samarco / Vale / BHP Billiton are responsible. Based on the “Agreement” signed in the Conduct Adjustment Term (TAC - Governança), I sought to investigate the technologies of “conflict management” and the governance structure of the process. The goal of this paper is to understand how the field of “negotiated conflict resolution” is built, through Discourse Analysis, seeking to understand how the “management of barbarism” is constructed, under the categories of Governance and Participation. From the intertwining of the selection of some statements of the Justice Institutions, companies and people affected, I sought to trace reflections by putting the discourse in motion within and in its interdiscursivity. In particular, I verified the processes and systems that produces effects of “truth(s)” and objectivity (ies), exercising power, controlling and disciplining, the dynamics of the lives of those affected, in this territory. These characteristics lead us to profound reflections on the modus operandi of private institutions, institutions of justice and the State, involved in the plot of this complex process, getting dirty with mud with each step they take, or getting stuck in it, in view of the delay of actions. Through the contradictions expressed in the title of the study, which mocks the emptying of words constantly used in this process such as: man, nature and mud, I sought the unfolding in broader reflections such as modernity, governance, sustainability, consensus/dissent, civilization and barbarism. In highlight, the analyses of the case in question reveals a problem regarding a procedural way of operating through these negotiated conflict resolution mechanisms, together with the reparation and governance policies, whose speeches and the exercise of power materialize in documents of the private institutions and public authorities, which institute a certain management of barbarism, the burden of which falls on thousands of affected people. In the context of conflicts, we can understand them as an expression of tensions in the process of reproducing development models, in which the “environment” is configured as a contested materially and symbolically terrain. Affected people had, and still have, their lives interrupted and violently modified. Their rights were, and are being, put in check, in a juridical-institutional plan, whose negotiations with the State and companies, defendants in this crime, happens through policies supported by an institutional architecture, which shows, at the very least, controversial.