The Swords of Ogum that Dream Phantom Jaguars

Or Respons-live-ability, Conceptual Roots

Abstract

In order to respond to the socio-environmental constraints (im)posed by the Anthropocene and through the “arts of attentiveness” of multispecies studies, we seek to slow down before the ruin of the old Jaguaré bridge that crosses the Pinheiros River, in the city of São Paulo. From this hesitation, we borrowed two concepts: the first, worked by Donna Haraway, which refers to responsiveness skills (response-ability) and the second, worked by anthropologist Anna Tsing, which refers to liveability. We proposed to tangle them and rearrange them in order to produce a third concept: the response-live-ability, that is, the capacity of the habitability to cultivate possible responses to emerging issues in the time of catastrophes. The hypothesis is that the resurgence of the ruins of the old Jaguaré bridge guard and cultivate responses, through multispecies habitability, to the vestiges of industrial infrastructure posed by the productive demands of the city of São Paulo.