The eternal return of the Praia de Iracema

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to trace the paths of “destruction” of the Praia de Iracema, in Fortaleza, which have been documented from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. It is inspired on my own ethnographic study conducted between 2015 and 2017 with transnational missionary projects that confront “sexual crimes” in Fortaleza. The article examines the dual process of selective use of scientific epistemology and the brutal crushing of other epistemologies in their relation with the recurring endings of the Praia de Iracema. Crossing knowledge from anthropology, geology, history, politics, and physics, I sought to perceive how the entanglements of agencies between humans and non-humans generate the eternal return of the Praia de Iracema, bringing to light the irrational rationalities of humanist times.