Ativismos cartográficos e representações espaciais: um debate essencialmente geográfico

Abstract

This paper discusses spacial representations through cartographic activism, emphasizing the connection between Geography and the knowledge of some organized traditional communities. Therefore, this paper aims to demonstrate how spatial representations—more specifically, cartographic activism (Santos, 2011; Gouveia, 2021)—can be understood as spatial practices essential to the territoriality of traditional communities and fundamental to their strategies of struggle and resistance. The ideas of ontological conflict (Escobar, 2016) and border knowledge (Mignolo, 2005; Santos, 2018) are combined to discuss spatial representations in different contexts and societies, employing the category of event analysis suggested by Santos (1999), and understanding them as spatial practices (Corrêa, 1995; Moreira, 2007; Souza, 2013) through a combination of historical and comparative methods (Marconi; Lakatos, 2003; Spósito, 2017; Torres-Miranda, 2019). In order to support this attempt, the specific objectives are, in turn: a) to present a discussion on the understanding of spatial representations as spatial practices and their direct relation to culture and knowledge production; b) to provide a contribution to history of cartography and the importance of maps in colonial modernity; c) to present an attempt to typify the spacial representations and cartographic activism. In these sense, the initial hypothesis is that historically, the territorial conflicts involving traditional communities have always been represented and conceived through maps exclusively created using modern cartographic language. And as has been shown at other times, the cartographic language is understood, apart from its significant technical and scientific contribution, as a tool for the exercise of colonial power (Harley, 2009). This work defends the thesis that cartographic activism changes the dynamics of conflict experienced by traditional communities, as different narratives actively dispute across different scales and contexts, operating as a new possibility for the strategic use of the community's own knowledge and the r-existence of the group's territoriality. The main reference material is the cartographic experiences developed in the area of action of a group formed by The Forum of Traditional Communities (FCT), from CARTONOMIA (CNPQ/UFF), and the Bocaina Observatory for Healthy and Sustainable Territories (OTSS/FIOCRUZ), between 2017 and 2019. In addition to all the imbricated experiences and knowledge that transcend borders and institutions, the central reference for the development of this research was the cartographic experience of Quilombo Da Fazenda, Ubatuba-SP.