Mariana's Voices in the Light of Chernobyl

Abstract

We believe, like Anthony Giddens (1991, 2010) and Ulrich Beck (1992), that postmodernity creates a totally new environment for the human being. In this new type of society, risks that were previously objects of science fiction or novels that prophesied the modern world are now reality. By observing how the facts of life of an ordinary citizen hit by a catastrophe are reported and recorded in history, we analyse ways of life that have been profoundly altered by the unfolding of one of these risks created by modernity and, therefore, affected by them. For that, we used as object of our research the Chernobyl and Mariana catastrophes, both fruits of an industrial project. Thus, we seek to understand the value that journalistic reports have in telling us a more faithful and complete story about the citizens and how they are classified as brazilians. We believe that the way the affected lives are counted and subsequently recorded makes a difference. Therefore, we draw a parallel between the journalistic series “Vozes de Mariana”, published in "Jornal Estado de Minas", and the book by the Belarusian author, Svetlana Aleksiévitch, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2015. Based on this contrast, we analyse the value of personal accounts in the dominant narratives of the modern world as well as their sociological and historiographical value and how they shape the brazilian meaning of citizenship.