Notes on the Real: expulsions and social suffering of the populations affected in Mariana/MG

Abstract

In the capitalist economic system, in the case of the extractive-mining industry, ore is resource and commodity and, in this sense, the territory is a commodity. The territory as a space of interest of capital, in the specific case of neoliberal mineral capital, creates any space in a long-term process induced by the dynamics of capital whose scale is the world. These mineral extraction activities based on macro-political agreements of great interest to international capital end up triggering processes of expulsions of populations that occupy areas rich in mineral resources. As a consequence, processes of illness and social suffering are established. A situation of “devastated land” is created where affected people wander through their symptoms and desires related to struggle and/ or mourning, desiring processes, metonymic processes of resistance and/or symptomatic captures building metaphorical refuges surrounding their losses.The reflections developed in this text were built on the writings by Freud and Lacan taking the records of psychoanalysis, mainly the notion of “real”, relating it to the symptoms and illnesses of those affected by Fundão Dam. The notions between knowledge, power and subjectivity developed by Deleuze and Foucault support the analysis of asymmetric relationships and domination among the affected people, State and companies. The rupture of the Fundão dam in Mariana/MG on November 5, 2015, of the mining company “Samarco, Vale, BHP Billiton” brings to the debate the effects of expulsions and questions remain about the implications of capitalist ties in subjects and territories.