Page 93 - ARTE!Brasileiros #58

The notion of infinite grief was introduced by James of whabi-sabi, where the valorization of precariousness Peixoto de Azevedo mentions in the epigraph, but also
Godley [2]from his historical studies on the massacre and simplicity in the art of living are central elements. The the very “dialectic of enlightenment,” which Theodor [PAGE 10]
of 20 thousand people in the American city of Buffalo, notion of resilience is insufficient, as it is not a matter Adorno and Max Horkheimer sought to describe as
during the American Civil War (1861-1865). Examining the of knowing whether a person is capable of returning to Europe burned in “ames in the !rst half of the 1940s
journalistic and testimonial accounts of the occasion, he the initial situation without major deformation, but of (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1986). The history of Brazilian [PAGES 11 ANd 12]
arrived at the idea that such a high number of dead, in knowing whether their ability to dream and transform Afro-descendant Black art is a history that involves
relation to the surviving population, could only arouse themselves into material and a different form survives traumatic repetitions of violence that were often glossed
a feeling of de-individualized and infinite grief. In other the process of loss. and to know, at the limit, if the loss over as “conquests of civilisation.” In this history, science,
words, the combination between the mourning of one itself has taught us something about it. academia and the entire cultural !eld are presented as a [PAGES 13 to 15]
and the mourning of the others with which one lives is Just as the Kleinian concept of reparation emphasizes structural part of the colonial system.
so extensive and intense that from now on mourning love and jouissance, but not desire, Lacan’s concept The system of slavery has penetrated so deeply
will become the dominant feeling in this community. of object a will begin with reference to desire and then into this culture that its victims are, to this day, largely
The survivors rebuild their lives, the affect of sadness become a lover’s agalma and then even an object subjected to various acts of violence that further reinforce
diminishes, but the remaining narratives remain plus-de-jouissance . For Klein and Lacan to repair is the brutality of slavery. Enslavement as a movement
determined by this collective loss. the indemnity, repair to arrange (in an aesthetic sense) and to repair (in an of submission to the “other” did not come to an end in
or return to the social bond ends up happening only ethical sense), that is, to bring together the ability to love 1888, quite the contrary; today it is gaining new strength
through the passage of generations and becomes one and be loved, with the intrinsic satisfaction obtained in from new or not-so-new biopolitics. From within that
of the most insidious problems in the clinic of collective the process. However, this does not seem enough to moment of brutal return of colonial policies in Brazil,
mourning. It remains to be seen whether we will have a think about the dimension of common life, overcoming with the reduction of the economic system to the export
source community or a destination community. resentment and future reparation, for which the political of commodities, with the suspension of workers’ rights,
dimension of desire is the most common expression. with the imposition of a shameless, of!cial racism, with
repair Veena Das studying the massacres between Hindus the policy of destruction of the forests and their native
Melanie Klein introduced the concept of reparation in and Sikhs, during the partition between Pakistan and populations, with the dismantling of the educational
psychoanalysis from two main connotations: taking back India, but also when researching how “repairs” ( healers system, which in this century had !nally opened up to Black
a place ( Restoration ) and making something good again ) understand their task as a gift and a curse [6] , realized populations, the current government of Brazil enforces
( Wiedergutmachen ). It all depends on the concept of that mourning in the context of injustice, violence and an overhauling of Brazilian history and, speci!cally in our
object one has in mind [3] : ethical, aesthetic or political. suspension of democratic processes depends on not case, of the history of Afro-descendant art. After all, one
Recovering a place , in the sense of reestablishing oneself, just how the community defines past guilt and present of the touchstones of the campaign and of the current
responds to grief as a trauma, as a “loss of the ground” and responsibilities, but fundamentally how it creates a government is the sweetening of colonial history and of
as an “exit of oneself” in the moment of pain and transitory common future. The children’s narrative, as well as the the 1964–1985 period of dictatorship.
madness that accompanies the first movements of grief. testimony of the survivors, become fundamental agents No other country in Latin America has seen politicians
A place is a symbolic instance, referring to the structure of this process. The big question for those who grieve so nostalgic for slavery and torture managing to climb the
and history that positions us in relation to the Other. infinitely is not whose fault or responsibility it is, but “ highest steps of the state hierarchy through voting. What
make good again, is a process related to the recovery how to live together… with it ”. is happening in Brazil today is a type of testing ground for
of pleasure, satisfaction and enjoyment. For Melanie a radical fascist policy bent on returning the country to the
Klein, reparation can be defined, in opposition, by the [1] Dunker, CIl (2022) Lacan and Democracy: Critique and pre-Republic era. Never has the cult of bandeirantes (1)
following processes [4] : Clinic in Dark Times . Sao Paulo: Boitempo. progressed so far, along with the contempt and violence
[2] Godley James (2018) Infinite grief: Freud, Hegel, and of the police and politicians against Black and Indigenous
1. Feelings of security and gratification or inferiority Lacan on the thought of death. Journal of the Theoretical populations. Poverty, among these ethnic groups, is
complex and greed for recognition. Humanities. Volume 23, 2018 – Issue 6. criminalised and a Black genocide continues each day
2. Sense of responsibility, genuine solidarity and ability [3] Lima, Rafael Alves Repairable and Irreparable Analysis: in cities and the countryside.(2) This is the context in
to forgive and be forgiven or guilt, eagerness to make the Psychoanalytic Concept of Reparation in the Brazilian which we see Brazil’s history now. The history of Black
sacrifices. Transition Agenda. Psychology: Science and Profession art should be reviewed within this macro history, as part
3. Ability to share and repay or desire for revenge and [online]. 2017, v. 37, of a long colonial struggle that has yet to end; in fact, it
resentment. [4] Klein, M. (1937) Love, Guilt and Reparation. In Melanie is quite the contrary.
4. Fantasies of reparation and loving sacrifices or inability Klein (1975) Love, Guilt and Atonement and Other Works
to love, give and receive, grow old and fulfillment (1921-1945) . Rio de Janeiro: Imago, pgs. 347-384. blaCk art, afro-DesCenDant or afro-brazilian,
through children. [5] Fukumitsu, ko (2018) Life, Death and Mourning: anD the aesthetiC DeviCe
Brazilian current affairs . Sao Paulo: Summus. It is good to start with the issue of the concepts of Afro-
Reparation is the antidote to grief, but also to the [6] Das, Veena (2015) Affliction: health, disease, poverty. descendant, Afro-Brazilian and “black art.” I consider
processes that attack our ability to love and to what New York: Fordham. these three concepts legitimate and they are often used,
Klein called the paranoid-schizoid position. This position almost interchangeably, by art historians. But there is
is understood as the process of object splitting, which artiCle rEPAIr ANd dEMoCrACy [PAGES 16 to 37] an aspect of this nominalist debate that we cannot lose
causes the fragmentation or partialization of the Self. sight of. For a long period, throughout the 20th century
Super invested in its narcissistic place, pursued with and until quite recently, as we shall see, there has been a
hatred and guilt by sadistic or masochistic fantasies, the BREAKING THE tendency to treat both Afro-descendant artists and non
ego tends to defend itself from anguish by mobilizing COMPLICITY BETWEEN Afro-descendant artists in an undifferentiated way, as
strategies such as projective identification and splitting part of “AfroBrazilian art.” It was only at the end of the
( splitting ).), the basis on which the phenomena of THE AESTHETIC DEVICE last century that this approach began to be questioned.
negationism arise. The process of recovering the At the moment that is central to this article, a new art
place of the self, with the reduction of idealizations and AND THE COLONIAL “of the body” is emerging, with a strong testimonial content
projections, therefore involves an integration of the object. (Seligmann-Silva, 2016), which has made it impossible
The partition between good-pleasure and ill-displeasure DEVICE: AFRO-BRAZILIAN to differentiate between artists, the construction of their
will give rise to a new unity, with the correlative acceptance subjectivity and their works. These artists act on what I call
of “bad-displeasure” within the Self itself. ART, AFRO-DESCENDENT “subjeto,” the subject, which, instead of idealistically trying
Post-Kleinian authors have observed that this
to “represent” an external world, shapes the world from
rehabilitation of the object for pleasure and this BLACK ART its subjectivity constituted in the context of class and race
recomposition of the object for the relationship explain con”icts. We must not forget that this “subjective shift”
a certain disposition to aesthetic sublimation, which Through the resumption of the work of has also been an ethnic one and, as art theorists such as
accompanies the depressive position. Writing, producing artists and writers from different areas, Hal Foster spotted as early as the 1990s, an ethnological
images and creating sensory effects create a converging the author analyzes narratives about the one (Foster, 1996). In this new context of the arts, the
perspective between the mimetic line and the cathartic history of Brazilian Afro-descendant black relationship between artistic production and ethnic
line of reparation, henceforth associated with the racial identity has become necessary, especially with
depressive position. In this sense, grief is resolved when art, which involves a series of traumatic regard to artists of African origin. For African identities
it is transformed, through reparation, into an ethical and repetitions over time are established within and countering the episteme
aesthetic unit. This can be verified empirically in the and the colonial system, “provincializing Europe,” in
symmetry between what is “says-does” and the way By MárCIo SElIGMANN-SIlvA the already classic expression of Dipesh Chakrabarty
in which “says-does” are said. Congruence between (2007).(3) In this way they were and are no longer able to
form and content that constitutes an expected criterion Slavery was the real body of modernity, its “esh, its energy, accept the idea of a “universality of art” as formulated
for monuments, museums and works of art that offer a technology. Its legacy certainly de!nes much of our by a Platonism in Antiquity (with its doctrine of the Eide,
themselves in a restorative function. present time, an effective dialectic of colonisation. […] But the transcendent ideals) and reformulated by Kant in the
A good synthesis of this argument will be found in there are horrors driven into my Creole “esh. And these modern age (with his idea of art as a pleasure “without
the Japanese practice of katsugui , whereby a piece of horrors, I cannot share. And, I know, horrors can’t be interest,” devoid of involvement and volition). As much
pottery, usually a household utensil, can be repaired using relativised. José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo, 2018, 17, 23 as Kant has always stressed that the universal in art is
methods so specifically implicated by the repairman that always subjective (Kritik der Urteilskraft §8), he subjects
the product becomes even more valuable and unique there is no physiCal violenCe that is not his aesthetics to an epistemology of an Enlightenment-
than the original piece. Katsugui has been used by accompanied by symbolic violence. Studying the history based and Eurocentric nature, as well as to a template
many grieving scholars [ 5] to exemplify the process of of Afro-Brazilian art requires entangling yourself in of classic beauty. (4)
reparation that grief demands, especially the fact that centuries-old continuums of histories of symbolic and This umbilical relationship between the doctrine
in the end the end of grief produces a sensation and physical violence. It also provides a chance to clearly of universalism in the arts and the colonial project is
pleasurable release. Such kind of reparation requires discern not only the “dialectic of colonization,” which fundamental and has often been overlooked by art
specific ethic to be understood, for example, the ethics São Paulo playwright and theatre director José Fernando theorists and historians, even in relation to African art,
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