Description
What if the slums could talk the G20 talk? Climate change, disaster reduction, digitalization and reduction of inequalities. It may be a consensus that we are all affected by those issues in different manners and intensities. We feel it individually, we live it collectively from a local perspective, but we all globally commune over these. The act of traversing realities and of translating global dynamics into the local context through a common language and accessible practices is more than a meaningful task: it is complex and involves a lot of creativity, communication skills and, of course, a certain dose of political imagination. Created by a young Brazilian communicator, René Silva, the F20 (or ‘Favelas20') Project emerges in this scenario with aims of inclusion of slums in the Global South over the current global debates discussed in light of the G20. Thus, in this paper I propose a discussion over the F20 Project not only as a practice of citizen diplomacy played by small non-state actors and marginalized bodies in a certain territory, but also as a practice of proactive contestation that emerges from specific ideals of global political imaginations shared by a certain complex of communities with specific dynamics of the Global South. This paper shall draw on two major discussions: one focusing on the kinds of practices enacted by the F20 and their character within the field of International Relations, and a second one with reflections about their political meaning in such moment, as well as future possible outcomes for the next presidency of the G20 in South Africa. With that, I hope to contribute to the Global IR Project by [re]centering political discussions in IR to the perspective of the marginalized, as well as to constructivist and utopia debates by bringing to the fore empirical experiences of the Global South based on specific dynamics of slums’ territory based on their everyday life perspective.
