Thursday, March 14, 2019

Worldmaking and the Economy of Desire in Rio 2016

Worldmaking and the Economy of Desire in Rio 2016
You can watch this presentation on You Tube


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.

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