A Experiência, a metrópole e o velho

Abstract

Embedded in a narrative theory, the concept of experience has its boundaries (re)defined in contemporary times. Based on the theoretical framework offered by Walter Benjamins ideas, it is possible to analyze what constituted as a process of experience decline in the present time. The practice of narrative, the result of collective memory and the sharing of common words that characterized the human experience, is no longer set as the main link between the generations, as in the past. So the answer to the question posed by Benjamin, who asks "Who will try to deal with youth invoking your experience?, no longer points to the elders, the narrator anthropological figure, as a key response. In this context, it becomes necessary to examine different aspects of this concept that still put it into play in relation to the elders with the modern metropolis. Grounded in an investigation on the memorial metropolis of Belo Horizonte, in the perspective of those who lived there throughout their lives, the elders are the subjects of enunciation that give life to this research. Using what was possible to depict from their narratives, I present reports of the trajectories of the elders lives with the intention to convey the depths of their experiences. I make use of the autobiographical and testimonial elements found in these statements, which reveal possible traumas, wounds and scars, brought with them for more than half a century of urbanization. However, the assertion of their lives adventure requires a positioning which excludes any possible perspective of pious reflection and/or reception of the reports. Differently, the proposed recall makes sense in a Benjaminian way and attests to the need for transformation of the present time, the retaking of the past and the possibilities that were buried in the ruins of the history continuum.