“FAVELA DOES NOT SHUT UP”: COMMODIFICATION, MATERIALITY, AND IDEOLOGY OF LANGUAGE IN TRANS-PERIPHERAL COOPERATION

ABSTRACT Based on fieldwork in the Complexo do Alemão, a group of favelas in Rio de Janeiro, this paper discusses the emergence of communicative resources in response to the commodification of rights, common goods and services, such as the right to the city, to housing and to public security. The paper delineates a transperipheral interaction - i.e., an event that gathered participants of social movements from the peripheries of South Africa and Rio de Janeiro - in which activists display an acute reflexivity about the commodification of communicative resources in capitalism. Even though they do not objectify language as an independent phenomenon, these activists portray the commodification of communicative resources as historically intertwined with the silencing of Blacks, the poor and other minorities. Language and materiality (of the body and of the struggle against the commodification of rights) surface as hybrid elements in the activists’ discourse - that is, language and materiality are part of a material whole, in Latour’s terms; activists strategically and situationally objectify or “purify” them in key moments of the debate. The evidences I bring in the analysis point to limits in the division that critics of the notion of language commodification and materiality (especially David Block, Marnie Holborow, William Simpson and John O’Regan) draw between discourse and reality, or between epistemology and ontology. For these critics, language can only be metaphorically, rather than literally, regarded as a (material) commodity in capitalism - which is contradicted by my data. The article finally claims that the separation between discourse and reality in their Marxist critique is the product of a Calvinist modernist semiotic ideology that the authors do not problematize.

摘要：基于对里约热内卢阿莱芒贫民窟群（Complexo do Alemão）的田野调查，本文探讨了为应对权利、公共物品与服务（如城市权（right to the city）、住房权与公共安全权）商品化（commodification）而兴起的交际资源（communicative resources）。本文勾勒了一场跨边缘社群互动（transperipheral interaction）——即一场汇聚了南非与里约热内卢边缘地带社会运动参与者的活动——其间活动家对资本主义下交际资源的商品化展现出深刻的反思性。尽管这些活动家并未将语言作为独立现象加以物化，但他们将交际资源的商品化与黑人、贫困群体及其他少数群体的历史缄默紧密绑定。在活动家的话语中，语言与（身体层面及反抗权利商品化斗争层面的）物质性（materiality）作为混合性要素浮现：换言之，正如拉图尔（Latour）所言，语言与物质性同属一个物质整体；活动家会在辩论的关键节点，基于策略与情境对二者进行物化或“纯化”。本文分析中所呈现的证据表明，语言商品化与物质性概念的批评者（尤其是大卫·布洛克（David Block）、玛妮·霍尔博罗（Marnie Holborow）、威廉·辛普森（William Simpson）与约翰·奥里根（John O’Regan））在话语与实在、认识论（epistemology）与本体论（ontology）之间划定的界限存在局限。这些批评者认为，在资本主义语境下，语言仅能以隐喻而非字面意义上被视为（物质）商品——这一观点与本研究的数据相悖。本文最终提出，这些批评者的马克思主义批判中话语与实在的二分，实则是作者未加以问题化的加尔文主义现代主义符号学意识形态的产物。