Visual Narratives of Hydropower: Carolina Caycedo in Brazil

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15648/cl..40.2024.4527

Keywords:

Carolina Caycedo, Brazil, dams, hydroelectric power

Abstract

Acting against the plausible public appreciation of dams as peaceful lakes or engineering feats, contemporary cultural production about hydropower narrates the experience of change as a way of drawing attention to the violence caused by the construction of mega-dams. This article aims to understand the politics of visibility in spaces that are often understood in an abstract, remote or idealized way and that, by the same token, can be easily erased by the discourses of progress that underpin many facets of Brazilian developmentalism. To do so, I focus on the work of Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo on the political and representational challenges of dam construction in Brazil, a country with a long history of dependence on hydroelectric power.

References

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.

Atkins, E. & J. Hope (2021). Contemporary Political Ecologies of Hydropower: Insights from Bolivia and Brazil. Journal of Political Ecology, 28(1), 247-265. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.2363

Avelar, I. (2001). Eles em nós: Retórica e antagonism politico no Brasil so século XXI. Rio de Janeiro: Record.

Avelar, I. y Pinto Neto, M. (2020). Energia limpa e limpeza étnica: As condições discursivas, jurídicas e políticas do ecocídio de Belo Monte. Luso-Brazilian Review, 57(1), 150-171.

Barca, S. (2020). Forces of Reproduction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Barragens: Questão Ambiental e luta pela terra. (1990). Proposta, 46.

Beal, S., Robbins, B. y Rubenstein, M. (2015). Infrastructuralism: An Introduction. Modern Fiction Studies, 61(4), 575-586.

Blackmore, L. (2020). Turbulent River Times: Art and Hydropower in Latin America’s Extractive Zones. En L. Blackmore y L. Gómez (Comps.), Liquid Ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean Art (pp. 13-34). New York: Routledge.

Braga, F. de S. (2020). A ditadura militar e a governança da água no Brasil: Ideologia, poderes politico-econômico e sociedade civil na construção das hidrelétricas de grande porte. Leiden: CRC Press/Balkema.

Brandi, P. (coord.). (2006) Panorama do setor de energia elétrica no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Centro de Memória da Eletricidade.

Brandi, P., Martins Cabral, L. M., Feliciano Dias, R., Lamarão, S. (Comps.). (2018). Panorama do setor de energia elétrica no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro Centro de Memória da Eletricidade.

Byrnes, C. (2018) Fixing Landscape: A Techno-Poetic History of China’s Three Gorges. New York: Columbia UP.

Caycedo, C. (2017-2018). Serpent River Book. Instalación en A Universal History of Infamy. Los Angeles, CA: Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Chakrabarty, D. (2009). The Climate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry, 35(2), 197-222.

Chakrabarty, D. (2021). The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago P.

De la Cadena, M. (2015). Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham: Duke UP.

Deckard, S. (2021). Waiting for the Master’s Dam to Crack”: Hydro-Dependency, Water Autonomy and World Literature. New Formations: A Journal of Culture/theory/politics, 103, 134-155.

Drummond de Andrade, Carlos. (1982, oct. 25). Adeus a Sete Quedas. Jornal do Brasil, Caderno B. http://memoria.bn.br/DocReader/DocReader.aspx?bib=030015_10&Pesq=%22Sete%20Quedas%20poderia%20ser%20salva%22&pagfis=49297

Escobar, A. (1996). Encountering Development. The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP.

Góes, B. (2015, oct. 10). Dilma sugere ‘estoque de vento’ e vira piada na internet. O Globo. https://oglobo.globo.com/politica/dilma-sugere-estoque-de-vento-vira-piada-na-internet-17744645

Gómez-Barris, M. (2017). The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives. Durham: Duke UP.

Haiven, M. (2013). The Dammed of the Earth: Reading the Mega-Dam for the Political Unconscious of Globalization. En C. Chen, J. MacLeod y A. Neimanis. Thinking with Water (pp. 213-231). Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s UP.

Humphreys, D. (2017). Rights of Pachamama: The emergence of an earth jurisprudence in the Americas. Journal of International Relations and Development, 20(3), 459–484. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-016-0001-0

Jameson, F. (2014) The Political Unconscious: Narrative as Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UP.

Moore, J. (2016). Capitalism and the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso.

Moore, J. y Patel, R. (2018). A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. Berkeley: U of California P.

Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens. www.mab.org.

Movimento Xingu Vivo. https://xinguvivo.org.br/.

Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

Nye, D. (1994). American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Saramago, V. (2025). Reimagining Hydropower: Ecofeminist and Transnational Perspectives on Belo Monte. En P. Vieira (Comp.). The Environment in Brazilian Culture. Gainsville: U of Florida P.

Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge.

Svampa, M. (2019). Las fronteras del neoextractivismo en América Latina: Conflictos ambientales, giro ecoterritorial y nuevas dependencias. Guadalajara: Maria Sybilla Merian Center.

Tolentino, Z. y Oliveira, L. (2015). Pachamama e o Direito à Vida: uma reflexão na perspectiva do novo constitucionalismo latino-americano. Veredas do Direito, 12(23), 313-335.

Wenzel, J. (2020). The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature. New York: Fordham UP.

How to Cite

Saramago, V. (2025). Visual Narratives of Hydropower: Carolina Caycedo in Brazil. Cuadernos De Literatura Del Caribe E Hispanoamérica, (40), 186–210. https://doi.org/10.15648/cl.40.2024.4527

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Published

2025-08-01

Issue

Section

Artículos