In this paper I analyse the making and unmaking of amphibious urban modernity in Recife in the Northeast of Brazil between 1920 and 1950. I argue that the transformation of the city was predicated on an absorptive and eradicative notion of whiteness that necessitated the creation of dry, enclosed land. The process of urban transformation proceeded not only through a racial division of space, but through a racial division of nature. Racialised groups, and the houses, marshlands, and mangroves where they lived were subject to eradication not only as spaces but as ecologies and landscapes. Brazilian racial thought in the period was fundamentally imbricated with ideas about nature. Histories of coloniality, indigeneity, enslavement, and escape meant that forests, wetness, and the spectre of commonly held land were understood as threats to whiteness and its self-association with order, enclosure, purity, and dryness. To answer why the division between the wet and the dry was so important, and why whiteness needed dryness, I turn back to philosophical investigations of the foundational myth of Brazil. I argue that a peculiarly Brazilian philosophy of nature, which drew racial lines within nature itself, underpinned a familiar, if uncanny, white supremacy that ordered society along the material and symbolic contours of race. Under colonial modernity, this philosophy translated into a division of the pure – rational, cleansed, dry, modern, urban space – from the impure – muddy, fearful, tangled, forested landscape. Under the conditions of dependent capitalism, the process on which this racial division of nature relied was enclosure. Identifying the historical process of the racial division of nature is of particular significance in Brazil, given the still flowing undercurrents of racial oppression and environmental plunder.

中文翻译：

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自然的种族划分：在累西腓制造土地

在这篇论文中，我分析了 1920 年至 1950 年间巴西东北部累西腓两栖城市现代性的形成和消亡。我认为城市的转型是建立在一种吸收性和根除性的白色概念之上的，这种概念需要创造干燥的、封闭的土地。城市转型的过程不仅通过空间的种族划分，而且通过自然的种族划分进行。种族化的群体，以及他们居住的房屋、沼泽地和红树林，不仅作为空间，而且作为生态和景观都会被消灭。这一时期的巴西种族思想从根本上融入了关于自然的思想。殖民、土著、奴役和逃亡的历史意味着森林、潮湿、公有土地的幽灵被理解为对白色及其与秩序、封闭、纯洁和干燥的自我联系的威胁。为了回答为什么干湿之间的划分如此重要，以及为什么白色需要干燥，我回到对巴西基本神话的哲学研究。我认为，一种独特的巴西自然哲学，它在自然内部划定了种族界限，支撑了一种熟悉的，即使是不可思议的白人至上主义，它按照种族的物质和象征轮廓来管理社会。在殖民现代性下，这种哲学转化为纯粹的——理性的、干净的、干燥的、现代的、城市空间——与不纯的——泥泞、可怕、纠结、森林景观的划分。在依赖资本主义的条件下，这种自然种族划分所依赖的过程是圈地。鉴于种族压迫和环境掠夺的暗流仍在流动，确定自然种族划分的历史过程在巴西尤为重要。