Environmental degradation: symbolic trauma and riverine identity in the São Francisco River, Brazil

Abstract

This article investigated how the environmental degradation of the São Francisco River —the Velho Chico— not only destroyed the ecology but also shattered the symbolic world of those born and raised along its banks. The aim was to understand how the oral narratives of the river dwellers in the middle section of the São Francisco expressed the psychic and identity-related suffering resulting from the river's environmental degradation, and how this degradation threatens the very possibility of the enchanted word. The research employed a qualitative approach, drawing on oral narratives collected on Canabrava Island (Bom Jesus da Lapa, Brazil). These narratives were analyzed using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that integrates Eni Orlandi's discourse analysis, Lacanian psychoanalysis — especially the concept of the real as that which escapes language— and Gaston Bachelard's poetics of water. Data was also collected through interviews, which constituted field research. The results indicated that, for the river's inhabitants, the river was never merely a water resource: it was a subject. Its degradation produced anguish, anticipatory grief, and a discursive silencing. It was concluded that any preservation policy that ignores this dimension may save the water and restore the riverbed, but will allow the enchantment and identity to die.