Sofrimento ético-político no cotidiano de trabalhadoras comerciárias da Zona Sul de Natal-RN

Abstract

Natal’ Administrative South Zone was urbanized in the order to conceive tourism, commercial services and civil construction, about which hegemonic narratives and forms of occupation of the city are produced to attract foreign investments and appeal to consumption, with spatial segregation and reproduction of oppression. For Brazilian women, especially black and poor, their circulation in spaces evokes material and symbolic challenges. These injustices, resulting from the processes of social exclusion/perverse inclusion on the capitalist system, can be experienced as pain, affecting subaltern groups. This research aimed to investigate how the ethical-political suffering, as much as the forms of resistance, are expressed in the everyday life of female workers in commercial establishments in the South Zone of Natal-RN. Field observations, research journals and analysis of implication constituted the initial phase of the study, which used a narrative interview script with a socio-demographic questionnaire as instrument. Narratives were produced after the interviews with 04 women with experience as attendant in the neighborhoods of Ponta Negra and Capim Macio. The narratives were analyzed through five thematic axes. In their everyday lives, the production of ethical-political suffering was expressed based on gender, race, class and territorial disparities in the meetings between peripheral workers and clients of wealthy classes. These women feel fear, sadness, indignation and demotivation in face of sexual and racial discrimination; harassments; precarious work and obstacles to migrate between neighborhoods, aggravated by intersectional arrangements. Collective strategies and unsubmissive attitudes are common ways of resistance, although customer service is the priority in the establishments’ operation. The reproduction of subordinate places on which the costumers places these workers reveals the colonial inheritances of subordination, exploitation and sexual objectification over the poor and racialized women. The narratives of historically invisible experiences express the contradictions of an excluding and intolerant urbanization and point out the need for intersectional perspectives to criticize it.