This panel brings together four Brazilian researchers who present different approaches to the interplay between memory and activism, or memory and social movements. It seeks to articulate the growing discussion on the memory-activism nexus within the field of memory studies, notably discussed by Ann Rigney and within the Memory & Activism Working Group of the MSA, strengthening a bridge of dialogue with authors and theories developed in Brazil. Thus, the discussion will cover: the production of a podcast by an organization dedicated to the memory of activism, and its claim for historical dignity; the memory conflicts in the naming of a street in Brasília; the relationships between struggles for memory and other demands of social movements involved in the occupation of a memory site in Ribeirão Preto; and a rereading of Brazilian homosexual activism based on the memory work of LGBTQIA+ press.
Pablo Pamplona, University of São Paulo
"Agency over violence: memory of activism and the claim for dignity"
In 1996, a district from the southern outskirts of São Paulo became known as the most dangerous urban region in the world, according to data released by the United Nations. That same year, local human rights activists and organizations founded the Forum in Defense of Life in order to create a “network of protection against violence”. The initiative follows a long tradition of social movements in the territory since the early 1970s. Among many challenges, the Forum called for the need of expanding the memory of those social movements to confront the stigma of violence inflicted on the residents. Through continued debates over the decades and the coordination with public servants, researchers, professors, and new generations of activists, in 2019, the Ana Dias Center of Memory of Popular Struggles was created with the aim of unifying efforts for the research and production of the memory of activism in the territory. I will present the trajectories that led to the Center's most influential work, the podcast Memórias Quebradas (Broken Memories), and an analysis of the critical perception shared by its producers about their own places in history. In a process similar to what Paulo Freire (2000) describes as the “linking of meaningful themes” in critical pedagogy, the producers reinforce the agency and dignity of marginalized people in the construction of a broad historical whole, expanding the territory while taking it as a starting and ending point of reference. Despite the podcast's amateur nature, it represents a significant expansion of activist memory work in the territory and demonstrates the effectiveness of the media as a way to, as Ann Rigney (2018; 2025) suggests, reconstruct social memory beyond the traumatic.
Luis Eduardo Quintão Guerra, University of Technology Sydney, "Remembering Arte Guerrilha in postdictatorial(ising) Brazil". In a book about the aesthetic avant-garde and political revolution, art critic Ferreira Gullar (1978) argued that while the Brazilian military regime (1964–1985) attempted to depoliticise the country (eliminating political leaderships, parties, and controlling Congress), theatre, cinema, popular music, and painting took on the role of re-politicising it. The social and political circumstances set by military represión influenced the shape and function of the aesthetic experiments developed during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Responding to the constraints of the military regime, some artists of the Brazilian 1970s avant-garde started adopting the tactics of urban guerrilla groups in the clandestine production of artistic experiments (Calirman, 2012; Shtromberg, 2016). Artists' use of unconventional and innovative methods to confront the military regime was labelled by art critic Frederico Morais as arte guerrilha (guerrilla art). Forty years later, the experiments of arte guerrilha were revisited by young activists protesting the alarming persistence of dictatorial elements within Brazil's democracy. This paper explores memory activists' uses of past forms of artistic expression in relation to the opportunities and constraints of the present. It questions how third-generation memory activists were affected by Brazil's State-led reconciliation initiatives (e.g. the Third National Human Rights Plan, PNDH-3, published in 2009), but also how past experiments of arte guerrilha informed the artistic procedures used in their attempt to address the inconsistencies within such initiatives. Therefore, I explore the role of memory in activism and place contemporary scholarship on memory activism in dialogue with theoretical approaches to the dynamics of cultural memory (Erll and Rigney, 2009) to understand how activists engage with representations of Brazil's dictatorial past to respond to the political challenges of the present.
Maria Alice Venâncio Albuquerque, Universidade de Ribeirão Preto
"Negotiating Memories, sharing spaces: Activist Practices and the Politics of Remembrance in the Madre Maurina Borges Memorial"
Practices are socially recognized performances anchored in bodies, artifacts, and institutions (Adler & Pouliot, 2011). They are patterned and competent actions endowed with shared meanings that intertwine discourse and materiality—historically situated performances through which social life is structured and transformed.
Applied to memory studies, this understanding allows memory to be conceived not merely as narrative representation but as a set of embodied and material practices through which remembrance becomes visible and operative. The concept of transnational memory (Levy & Sznaider, 2006; Assmann, 2010) underscores how mnemonic repertoires and symbols circulate beyond national borders, being translated and reinterpreted across diverse contexts.
Within this framework, since August 11, 2025, the building known as Lar Santana in Ribeirão Preto has been occupied by social movements, giving rise to the Madre Maurina Borges Memorial named in reference to Franciscan nun arrested, tortured, and exiled for supporting resistance during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship. The occupation aims to open the site to the community through discussion circles, agroecological fairs, and cultural events while pressing authorities to restore and institutionalize it as a space of remembrance.
This work seeks to describe the practices promoted by the memorial to highlight the relationships between activism and social memory. Considering that the movements leading the occupation are not traditional organizations linked to demands for memory, truth, and justice, the study reflects on how distinct struggles over remembrance intersect in the same location. The Madre Maurina Borges Memorial thus operates simultaneously as a commemorative site and a transformative act of remembering, where local activism and transnational repertoires of memory converge.
20260731T140020260731T1530America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires9.13. Memory and activism in BrazilSV404 (ART)MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
