Dec 9

Dec 9 #223 | Mapping The Roots: A History Of Displacement w/ Mirna Wabi-Sabi

Intro: 9:08

In this episode, I speak with political theorist, writer, and editor at Gods & Radicals Mirna Wabi-Sabi.

Mirna and I begin this discussion by laying out the nature of our upcoming collaborative work together, as I’ll be traveling to southern Brazil for two months, beginning December 8th. In explaining how our work overlaps in crucial ways, we remark on the absurdity of contemporary politics in both in Brazil and the United States, and how the often narrow focus of climate justice activism in the Global North often limits our approach to addressing the roots of the ecological crisis more specifically, and the legacy of colonialism more generally. From there, we moving into an examination of the themes presented in Mirna’s article ‘The History of Displacement of Non-White Women in Villa Mimosa: Mapping the roots of Brazil’s most notorious red light district from the Byzantine Empire and WW1,’ which addresses the long and complex history of slavery and sex work in Europe and how this is tied to the varied forms of displacement of marginalized populations up the present moment.

This examination also includes the work of historian Clare Makepeace and her research into WWI, heterosexuality, and the role sex work played in the expression of male heteronormativity up to the present moment. Mirna examines how this dynamic is felt today in the displacement of women, with a particular focus on Rio’s red light district Villa Mimosa:

A high speed train that will connect Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo is expected to pass through Vila Mimosa, and will displace these women once again. Countries like Germany, France, Spain and Italy have economic interests here and are investing in this project. There are plans to build a new place for the women to work called ‘City of Girls', but the budget still floats in the distance, far away from any European investors' field of vision. Western Europe's economic interests have marginalized other people for hundreds of years. Vila Mimosa is a microcosmic example of the global structure that has been, and still is, displacing and weakening the existence of non-white women.
These economic interests certainly don’t benefit all people. Whom are they benefiting? Western Europe is small and vulnerable. As we can see in the map from before, it occupies half of the European continent, which is already the second smallest continent in the world, and has very few natural resources. Even so, it’s a force capable of evolving its methods of enslavement, and of sustaining a society where women like the workers of Vila Mimosa have no choice but to expose themselves to brutal situations to survive. (http://bit.ly/2Rb2gqs)

Mirna Wabi-Sabi is a writer, political theorist, teacher and translator. She is an editor at Gods&Radicals, founder of the Enemy of the Queen magazine and of the Plataforma 9 media collective. Her work orbits around Capitalism, White Supremacy and Patriarchy, and resistance to Eurocentrism and Western Imperialism.