Search

This is an essay that depicts the line of a mountain ridge as an element to contemplate the abyssal condition expressed in the landscape of Belo Horizonte, the capital of Brazil's Minas Gerais province. The landscape is understood as the mediation of abyssal lines that determine the center and the periphery, based on the dichotomies culture/nature, belonging/non-belonging. This reflection, underpinned by the interpretation of photographic images, discusses the predatory forces of mining activities, real estate speculation in the landscape, resistance movements linked to socio-environmental struggle and the urban landscape production, examining them from culturally diverse references. Lastly, an analysis is done of the line created by the mountain and portrayed in nature paintings on city walls in order to enhance the perception of its symbology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broaches social processes involving morality, normativity, violence, life, and death. I base my argument on an ethnographic research conducted in a slum in Belo Horizonte, which is the triangulation between three primordial normative regimes--that of the "crime world", that of the state, and that of the church--that will produce what the theoretical Judith Butler calls a framework, that is, the frame that separates who is on the inside from who is on the outside from what is intelligible. I conclude that, since this is a territory marked by violence, it is this triangulation that will separate who is "human" from who is "killable". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]