Beyond words: Theories and practices of horizontality as a construction of utopias in the free pass movement - DF

• Autor(a) principal: Saraiva, Leila
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Ciências do Estado (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufmg.br/index.php/revice/article/view/e5028
• topic: Horizontality; Free pass movement; Discomfort; Hierarchy; Leadership; Horizontalidade; Movimento passe livre; Hierarquia; Desconforto; Liderança; Horizontalidad; Movimento passe livre; Malestar; Jerarquia; Liderazgo

Since its formation in 2004, the discussion on the guiding principles of the Movimento Passe Livre-DF (MPL-DF) has been a fundamental part of its debates and reflections, based on the assumption that the politics that the collective intends to build is based on the annulment of the distance between means and ends (Saraiva, 2010:79). In other words, a daily battle so that the revolution that the movement seeks to build begins to be experienced within its own practices. From an internal perspective, as the author is also a militant, this article seeks to start from the ethnographic analysis of meetings and debates of the movement to discuss the notions of one of its most cherished principles: horizontality. As explored in the text, there is a flow of different conceptions of what it means to be horizontal, perceptions that coexist, intersect, dialogue and sometimes oppose each other. This flow of concepts and practices also reveals different ideas about the nature of power and hierarchy, as well as the notion of the political subject that the MPL-DF wishes to build. The daily struggle for the realisation of horizontality is thus an opportunity to understand the projects of society that the MPL-DF builds, as well as the challenges for its realisation. Inspired by Safatle's (2016) discussions on helplessness as a revolutionary affection, the article bets on the permanence of discomfort as a mobiliser of the construction of a horizontal collectivity, as well as the search that moves us towards our own utopia.