I Imagine Them Like This...

Structural violence in the periphery of Fortaleza-CE

Abstract

This paper walks through discourses interpreted in drawings in this researcher's graphic diary during field trips and moments of observation. Just as Karina Kuschnir (2019) points out, anthropological research contributes to drawing the world around us. It is on the importance of this tool, drawing, that the discourses of the residents of the periphery and the populations that live around it, gain strokes, colors, and geometric shapes. This is a study of how the Brazilian favelas, specifically the Carlos Marighella Occupation in Fortaleza, Ceará, are drawn in the Ceará imaginary about the "other" (distant or not physically), by discourses that sometimes victimize and sometimes marginalize their bodies and territories. The drawings and the text discuss with authors of urban anthropology, such as Alba Zaluar (1985; 2004) and with sociologist Gabriel Feltran (2011), but go through the Orientalism of Edward Said (1990) and the necropolitics of Achille Mbembe (2018), to problematize the legitimate and the illegitimate in the structure of racism and urban violence in certain circumstances. As well as programs that purport to "save" their residents from misery and distorted images in media of increasingly dangerous favelas. In doing so, they justify violence against this population. The drawings are in the order of the observed statements. They are mostly in black and white, made with Nankin Drawing pen #00.5. To give evidence to the speeches collected, they are the only ones that appear in color within geometric shapes, because this way, the meaning of "drawing/painting" would be more evident.