Space, modernity and whiteness: notes from Cidade Ademar, São Paulo, Brazil ¹

Abstract

In this article I attempt to reclaim the notion of space and its construction as a modern category oriented by raciality, by the onto-epistemological pillars of separability, determinacy and sequentiality, based on a universal pretension. I contrast modern space with place-space, as proposed by Muniz Sodré, in order, in the midst of this contrast, to glimpse other possibilities of understanding and of inhabiting space. Thus, I present the ongoing movements of urban renewal in Cidade Ademar, São Paulo, while playing with affectability as a way to explore the cracks, which modern spatial representation seeks to hide in the district. Lastly, I attempt to present/confront the modern subject who hides himself under a cloak of rationality and universality, who organizes and appropriates the space he continually names, in order to denaturalize the modern/colonial violence that suppresses other spatial understandings oriented by relationality, or by affectability.

Keywords:
Place-space; Territory; Modernity; Whiteness; Whitening of the Territory