Lives in transit: subjects, paths and narratives in the city of Belo Horizonte

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the formative experiences of workers throughout daily urban travels in the metropolitan area of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. As a fundamental assumption, it is pointed out that urban trips are not just a hiatus or a simple functional act, but a subjective process assumed by people moving around the city. To conduct this investigation, Walter Benjamin's concept of experience is fundamental, being associated with the narrative. Thus, we approach the narratives produced during and after urban displacements, taking the figures of the “sedentary peasant” and the “merchant sailor” to think about the subjects’ “travel in time” and “travel in space”. The experience of moving around the city was analyzed based on the following axes: the life stories of the subjects in Belo Horizonte; the uses and perceptions of buses’ spaces; the relationships established by individuals with strangers during urban daily travels; the body notion, its role, and sensitivities in urban daily travels; and finally, the city and life desires drawn up by the researched individuals. The researched workers’ experiences have raised the need of questioning the aesthetic dimensions of urban daily travels which is a key condition to building a culture on meetings that could materialize the Right to the City to its inhabitants.