A memória como gesto : artesanias temporais em uma cidade-trapeira

Abstract

Based on five initiatives of memory regarding Belo Horizonte (MG), which we consider smaller memories with a collective nature, this study aims to develop an analytical perspective that allows an understanding of memory as a gesture, seeking to complexify the understanding of collective memory proposed by Maurice Halbwachs (1990) through the experience of the capital of Minas Gerais and its memories. To this end, we perceive these initiatives as threads and patches of a mesh with which our ragpicker-city engages – a metaphor that we attribute to the city and that also characterizes our methodological approach. It is a metaphor related to a way of engaging with memories through their fragments and traces. These initiatives appear to intend to account for a shared experience, yet they embody and reveal the temporal multiplicity that constitutes them. This multiplicity arises from a heterogeneous everyday life, entangled in conflicting and coexisting temporalities and spaces. From our perspective, these memories can be described as abigarradas, borrowing Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui's (2015; 2018) term, in which temporal and spatial dimensions are rearranged in a continuous movement that exposes the instabilities and conflicts surrounding memory and the city itself. By examining these narratives, our aim is to conceptualize memory as a gesture — a complex and multifaceted act that is imbued with ethical, aesthetic and political dimensions, in which there is liberty. This conceptualization is tied to a productive effort concerning the city, which we consider as an unsettled field characterized by contradictions, silences, and invisibilities reflected in distincts narratives, thus shaping diverse narrative identities.