Ferrovias: resistências, lembranças e esperanças nas narrativas de ferroviários e ferroviárias aposentados(as) da RFFSA

Abstract

The presente essay has the objective of giving an interpretation about the narratives and discursive representations about rail transport in the sociotechnical imaginary of retired railway workers of the Brazilian railway company (Rede Ferroviária Federal Sociedade Anônima – RFFSA (1957 a 1996) and some of their relatives, from oral interviews. The thesis formulated is that the narratives and discursive representations about the RFFSA help in the construction of a sociotechnical imaginary that, as told by the subjects of this research, participates from a moment of technological transition and actively responds in a social struggle that appears discursively (that is, in the narratives of the people interviewed) on ways of thinking and taking positions with regard to the Brazilian railway system. The methodology was the collection, transcription and systematization of interviews conducted by the proponent of this research between 2018 and 2020 with retired railway workers from the RFFSA and some of their relatives (a total of 14 participants), in dialogue with conceptions of the field of Language and Oral History and its methodology. Among with the interviews conducted throughout 2017 and 2018 by the team of the Historycal Archive Archelau de Almeida Torrres, in the municipality of Araucaria, which also used the Oral History method with retired railway workers who live or lived there (a total of 10 interviewees), and who gave body to the Project Ferroviários de Araucária: a história que ajudaram a trilhar. The results achieved by the research were, in relation to the investigation field: the contribution to the discussions for the history of railways history and the oral methodology, trough the problematic and reflection of this method in its relation with the language, the discussion and view about women in the railwaz context and about the railways women workers, the approach of the idea of sociotechnical imaginaries from the living experience of retired railway workers and their waz of understanding the privatization process of RFFSA, as such the possibilities for the future. Besides that, the constant interaction and engajement from this researcher with railsways activities, resulted in the constitution of an audiovisual archive, that can be found at the institutions that made possible the development of this research, and also one copie of this document for each one of them.