Resumo

BARRIENTOS-GOMEZ, Andy Leonel. Capitalism’s Wastes: Debt-Bondage, Landscape, and Extractivism in 7 Prisoneiros. Cuad. CILHA [online]. 2023, vol.24, n.2, e002.  Epub 27-Nov-2023. ISSN 1852-9615.  http://dx.doi.org/10.48162/rev.34.062.

The expression, selva de pedra, is one of the most common epithets used to describe the megalopolis that is São Paulo, Brazil. This selva de pedra is characterized by a landscape of high-rises that indicate the triumph of modernity, but at the same time hides the wastes of capitalism and its cruellest mechanisms of power. For example, debt-bondage is a capitalistic system of mechanisms which subjugate and exploit individuals in a manifestation of modern-day slavery. Debt-bondage is a rare topic in today’s Brazilian cultural production but has come to surface recently in the social sphere due to the film, 7 prisoneiros (2021) that deals with the exploitation of individuals in the urban landscape of São Paulo. In this manner, the landscape reflects the metamorphosis that occurs in the characters who are exploited in the film. In this article, I use the theoretical framework of Teresa P.R. Caldeira and her notion of fortified enclaves, as well as Zygmunt Bauman’s sociological discourse, to analyse how the urban landscape (de)constructs the subjectivity of the characters in 7 prisoneiros. Throughout the text, I reconceptualize the notion of a fortified enclave, into an enclave of entrapment, to argue that this space produces wasted lives. Thus, one can delineate how debt-bondage is a by-product of extractivism and how this system exploits the individual and hides in the shadows of the immense concrete jungle that is São Paulo.

Palavras-chave : landscape; debt-bondage; extractivism; Brazil; capitalism.

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