“We are a neighborhood of fights”: public action and counter-narratives about the territory

Abstract

I discuss ways of narrating a territory from the voices of the political-cultural collective Comunidade Cultural Quilombaque with the aim of analyzing how a counter-narrative disputes the meanings of the territory with the dominant narrative. I combine the literature on counter-narratives, which focuses on the construction of storylines that oppose dominant forms, and on public action, which is central to emphasizing the role of individuals, groups and movements in the construction of what is understood as public, to carry out the task of interpreting the ways in which actors mobilize to counter their narrative to the dominant discourse on the peripheral territory. I used in-depth interviews with the collective’s leaders and the analysis of secondary material, which allowed me to read the ways in which the movement narrates itself. It is from another way of narrating their territory that they manage to bring out their potential.