Urban imaginary in Vassouras city in Rio de Janeiro: building a Republican social memory

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Gerlane Bezerra
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Clio (Recife. Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufpe.br/revistas/index.php/revistaclio/article/view/24712
• topic: Urban Imaginary; Social Memory; Democracy; Imaginária Urbana; Memória Social; Democracia

This article aims at examining the construction of social memory from the perspective of an analysis of the urban imaginary in the city of Vassouras located in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Despite the historiographical tradition that presents the city as  a “city of barons”, marked by a conservative and aristocratic identity that can be traced to the imperial period of brazilian history, the urban imaginary claims another reading in wich the city is presented as a positive assertion of a republican identity. This latter perspective is intimately related to the process of redemocratization of Brazil wich has prompted a significant increase in the promotion of new urban images that tend to include narratives previosly discredited, marginalized and excluded from the urban social memories. Thus, the urban imaginary of public space lends the city the character of a polyphony of memories, wich should be understood as metaphors of power.