Worldmaking
and the Economy of Desire in Rio 2016
Cities partake
in selection competitions for the Olympic Games in their desire to be included
in an international community of nations upholding a set of ‘universal values’.
They promise to promote these values through the impeccable organization of the
mega-event, in an ordered, safe and hospitable manner. Such ‘scripts’ can be
followed with some degree of precision, but the precision itself comes at a
cost.
This is what the
Citade Maravilosa, a city of phantasmagoric
postcolonial mobilities, discovered during one of the most challenging projects
it undertook in its modern history. The Rio 2016 ‘project’ proved a
double-edged sword, cutting the city both at the end of discipline and
punishment and that of self-fulfilment through art-making and tourist
worldmaking. With every change introduced to its fabric to produce a
universally acceptable profile, new sociocultural problems emerged or old ones
were exacerbated, withering its ‘marvelousness’ for the sake of conforming to
the demands of hospitality. Today, intellectual, academic and political critics
of this persistence to host the Olympics continue to perform post-mortem
examinations on Rio de Janeiro’s wounded cultural and social spheres, whereas
its citizens continue to clean the bloodbath of violence caused by the
mega-event’s ‘pacifications’.
In this
presentation I outline the ways in which we can approach the economic,
political and cultural cost of securing a ‘passport’ to the mega-event’s
amplified global mobilities of tourism, professional migration and technology. I
provide you with two scenarios. First, I argue that for Rio the cost was
double: not only did the passport posit serious challenges and obstacles to the
city’s field of justice, it also invited the ‘scientisation’ of its carioca uniqueness, thus reducing it
into a spectacle to be enjoyed ‘from afar’. The two costs are interdependent
and point to Rio’s (in)ability to protect its freedom in late capitalism. The
second scenario is contentious for its optimism. I claim that there are also
voices of hope articulated within these stringent structures of international,
national and regional regulation, which point to alternative vistas of a
brighter future. To explore conflicting forces within this desire to make
better worlds for cariocas and their
guests, I dig a bit deeper into the cultural poetics of Rio 2016. This poetics
supersedes politics and can be potentially liberating.
