Performance and collective mobilization

“Chorar os filhos” as radical resistance against state violence

Abstract

This article reflects on Nina Caetano’s performance “Chorar os Filhos” (Crying the Children), presented at the Belo Horizonte International Theater Festival in 2018, and her subsequent video-lecture-performance, “Queremos que o Estado pare de matar menino” (We Want the State to Stop Killing Boys), from 2022. Using concepts from Judith Butler and Jacques Rancière, and testimonies from Rafaela Lima’s website “Quando o luto é luta” (When mourning is struggle) (2023), the text has as its backdrop the tensions of a mobility experienced as a frustrated promise or an impossibility. To the extent that mobility is always related to immobilities (SHELLER; URRY, 2008), which sustain or challenge it, the interruption of the urban flow through the performance can be read as a form of strategic immobility, which forces subjects to stop, reflect, and confront state violence. By addressing how performance constitutes a space of resistance and renewal in the collective of mothers, we seek to reflect on new ways of inhabiting and marking spaces of resistance.