Paper short abstract:

Adopting a situational approach, this article examines a social phenomenon associating a heritage institution and a social movement in Brazil. Our story begins at the National Historical Museum of Rio de Janeiro, where two ambigous standpoints are at stake.

Paper long abstract:

Situational analysis is widely referred to and applied in anthropology. This article adopts this analytical tradition to examine a social phenomenon associating a heritage institution and a social movement in Brazil. Our story begins on an interactional scale at the National Historical Museum of Rio de Janeiro, where a new permanent exhibition is being presented.

Conceived from eviction debris, result of the destruction of a poor neighborhood during the works for Rio 2016 Olympics, the new exhibition was presented as a turning point. The resignification of the eviction ruins would uphold the beginning of a new curatorship approach, advocating for a common construction of Brazilian republican history. Rejecting the perspective of innate fundamental rights, the new exhibition would instead raise-awareness on the how rights fulfillment is dependent on multiple citizen struggles.

To understand the relational depth that the situation evokes, the article retraces its genealogy to examine the long and conflictual trail of “heritage action” embodied in the exhibited debris. The decrypted system of relations is, subsequently, intertwined with the notions of discourse and power in order to demonstrate two ambiguous standpoints embedded in our situation: the potential of urban contestations in the preservation of the memory of the dispossessed, and in a deeper ground, the dawn of a new dominant tradition upon the failure of citizen utopias.