A modernização da Amazônia: do mergulho na totalidade à lapidação da subjetividade

Abstract

The way undergoing changes in the Amazonian modernization process is incorporated in mans actions and relationships with nature and other men is the research object of the study herein presented, which was done by taking the subjects perceptions regarding the transformations of their past and present modes of conducting their work as well as the consequences for family and community relations. The study took place in the region of the Tapajós River, in western Pará State, an area rich in minerals and other natural resources, causing several types of economic exploration and exploitation, in contrast with the remarkable presence of groups that develop primary activities in quite rudimentary ways. In order to apprehend the forms by which their subjectivity is expressed in the objective reality, the subjects narratives were taken concerning their previous, and current life and working conditions and their family and community interactions as well. In short, we were to understand in what way that reality is perceived by them, in which they are constituted as human beings and at the same time which they constitute. Two groups were selected who experience those changes in their major economic activities. One consisted of residents of Ponta de Pedras, a small community located in the banks of the Tapajós River where extractivism represents a principal economic activity, mainly hunting, fishing, and family- run subsistence agriculture. However, both the reduction in the catch of fish, in consequence of the use of mercury in gold prospection in the regions rivers, and the appearance of tourism as an alternative to economic development for this community have led it into a moment of transition towards commerce. Another group is composed of gold prospectors who previously worked in this area, and who are now under- or unemployed workers, living in Santarém, the major city in the region. Case study was the methodology selected, and the data was gathered by means of the narrative interview apparatus, within the qualitative approach framework. Ten subjects contributed to this study besides two other professionals who were listened to, and whose information was included as complementary data. Observations, information and data thus gathered were analyzed under four categories grounded on two theoretical approaches, namely the Freudian Psychoanalysis, and the Critical Theory by T. Adorno, M. Horkheymer and W. Benjamin, in special the conceptions present in their cultural critique. The groups perceptions of the modernization process they have been experiencing were submitted to the Enlightening or Rationalistic principles concerning the concept of modernization. Enlightenment: ones mechanism of internal and external regulations manifested toward the subject; barbarism and civilization: ones archaic violence practiced with the power of the instinct, or ones actions based on reason; ethics and instrumental reason: subjects normative action orientation based on will directed towards liberty and solidarity, or otherwise commanded by domination and exploitation; autonomy and heteronomy: ones freedom to decide, and to choose the way by which one is to conduct his destiny, or the imposition of the power against ones will. The research results showed that the kind of modernization that takes place in the Amazonian region grants priority to the development of technological and instrumental rationality, and can be considered as a regression in human purposes. Last but not least, evidence emerged that culture subjected to the dictated economic rationality becomes subculture, but it also allows for the moment of its overcoming. The results achieved from the subjects data have shown that the principle of domination is deeply rooted in this process, although not out of any rational formulation, rather in consequence of the primal repression present in the unconscious of a system that imprisones reason. Reflection has been kept apart from the human historical process; nonetheless, this study has brought reflection forward as act of resistance against the economic and cultural irrationality