Aberrant movements and the struggle for land: dialogues between the philosophy of difference and peasants excluded from the land history of Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

            This article aims to connect the philosophy of difference, particularly the concepts of aberrant movements and the colonial unconscious, with the agrarian context of Rio Grande do Sul up to the Land Law of 1850, thereby expanding the concept of the peasant not as a class but as a conceptual personae. Its goal is to shed light on historical movements and figures in the struggle for land, linking them to contemporary counter-colonial practices and knowledge. To this end, a reading of the bibliography of Brazilian agrarian history was conducted, employing a cartographic-inspired approach. This review reveals that subjects implicated in the exclusion of land rights can be conceived as aberrant movements, as they formed groups with singular and multiple modes of organization to survive under capitalism’s dominant system, only to be erased from Brazilian agrarian history. Thus, this text reaffirms the need to rethink how we perceive these historical movements, invisibilized by traditional historiography, within an ethical-political landscape marked by the devastation of rural spaces and exploitative land-use practices.