By OLGÁRIA MATOS*
Lecture at the seminar in honor of the geoscientist's centenary
First of all, I would like to thank Sesc, the founder of the Edward Saïd Chair of Contemporary Studies, for the invitation to actively propose this tribute to Aziz Ab'Saber, for everything he means to us, to the University, to geoscience scholars in Brazil and abroad, and for how close he is and will always be to us and to society as a whole.
I could only express here my immense happiness and gratitude for the happy coincidence of having him in my life, through my time at the University of São Paulo, in his home or in mine, in the Municipal Department of Culture, under the management of Marilena Chaui.
My reason for being here is to speak of friendship, not as someone who would analyze his thought and his incomparable work. I would just like to mention some precious moments that remain in our memory and that accompany us like a talisman, like protection and hope that his presence and knowledge brought us. And this is because Aziz Ab'Saber was a storyteller, a craftsman of words that, lasting, made geographical science an enchanted tale, leaving in each one, as a unique teacher, a mark, like “the hands of the potter on a clay vessel”.
That is why I now recall, in particular, the “City-Citizen-Citizenship” Seminar, held by the Municipal Department of Culture, whose general theme was “From the Greek Polis to the Modern Metropolis”. In it, Aziz Ab'Saber discussed urban landscapes, emphasizing that of São Paulo, in its geological, geographical, historical and therefore human layers. He spoke in the precise sense of personal generosity and institutional responsibility of someone who transmits knowledge and experiences like a chronicler who “narrates events, without distinguishing between the great and the small, who takes into account the truth that nothing that once happened can be considered lost to history”.
Thus, Aziz Ab'Saber does not separate scientific disciplines in his geological, geographical and historical analyses, the history of nature constituting “a total work of art”, giving voice to stones, rocks, rivers, seas and wind direction. With this, Aziz simultaneously constructs an epistemology according to an anthropological materialism that is a knowledge and a know-how-to-live.
Aziz Ab'Saber expressed it this way: “Science is made for the knowledge of all things. Knowledge of the universe, of the structure of matter, of the structure of life, of the origin of the atmosphere, of the origin of living organisms [...] is made at a level of potentialization of “common sense” [...]. However, potentializing 'common sense' without method is of no use to any type of science. So [...] to potentialize common sense in the knowledge of physical realities, of physical-chemical realities, of ecological realities, of social realities, is in the method”.[I]
When he presented the geographical chronology of the city, it was that of the planet and the universe that was manifested, like the Paris of belle-époque emerged whole from the bottom of a teacup. And Ab'Saber Aziz noted in his essay “Geomorphology of the Urban Site of São Paulo”: “The main geographic originality of the urban site of São Paulo resides in the existence of a small mosaic of hills, river terraces and floodplains, belonging to a restricted and very well individualized compartment of the relief of the southeastern portion of the Brazilian Atlantic Plateau. In such a way the urban and suburban skeleton of the São Paulo agglomeration was juxtaposed to the sedimentary basin of the upper Tietê, that the study of the current site of the Metropolis is equivalent, in many aspects, to a study of the physiographic region itself, restricted and individualized, known by the name of São Paulo basin. Forced by this circumstance, the present work will include the study of that level of the Atlantic Plateau that extends from the continental 'highs' of the Serra do Mar to the 202 foothills of Cantareira, Jaraguá and Itapetí, involving the Pliocene sedimentary basin and a good part of the Alto Tietê hydrographic basin”.[ii]
This learned description has a full academic meaning, it is that of a physiognomist of the genius locci, which encompasses documentary and field studies with written and oral traditions, knowledge that comes to us from everyone, not being exclusive to intellectuals, as Aziz Ab'Saber elaborates his knowledge with the knowledge of those who live in geography and inhabit it, knowledge present in the cultural practices of different communities.
In his geographical studies, Aziz Ab'Saber recognized all the ages of the Earth, making its past present, but this is because it is not the past that explains the present, but the opposite. In this temporal reversibility, everything happens as if the effect preceded the cause. And Aziz Ab'Saber writes: "The flattening of the late Tertiary spared masses of resistant rocks, giving rise to inselbergs and elongated ridges, some of which are crossed by gorges. These, in fact, are the only remnants to break the relative monotony of the vast stretches of the backlands hills. Some groups of inselbergs, such as Patos (PB), Quixadá (CE), northwest Ceará or Milagres (in the municipality of Amargosa, BA), constitute monumental landscapes, endowed with a striking individuality[…] In a way, inselbergs are related to sugarloaves: in periods of dry climates in areas that are now very humid, the current sugarloaves were inselbergs. In contrast, in old humid phases that preceded the flattening of the late Tertiary, some of the current inselbergs that dot the dry hinterlands may have been sugarloaves.”[iii]
The plasticity of the landscape and its becomings are found both in Aziz Ab'Saber's reflections and in the kindness and moral delicacy that constitute the great humanists. For this reason, whether in technical discussions about the Amazon or in questions of the suffering of entire populations in hostile regions, such as the backlands, Aziz Ab'Saber had the integrity of his lucidity in public, ecological, social and cultural policies, against the usury of nature and individuals by the dominant.
Aziz was great in his size, it is true, but great in the sense that Burckhardt understood the word “great”: “greatness is the sum total of the personality of an individual who seems great to us, who continues to exert a magical influence on all of us through the centuries […], far beyond the boundaries of simple tradition. When we say that greatness is something unique and irreplaceable, this does not result in an explanation. A great individual is one without whom the world would seem incomplete to us, because certain great actions could only be possible by him, within his time and his environment, and are inconceivable without him. There is a proverb that says ‘no man is indispensable’, but precisely the few who are, are great”.[iv]
* Olgaria Matos She is a professor of philosophy at Unifesp and in the Department of Philosophy at USP. She is the author, among other books, of Philosophical palindromes: between myth and history (Unifesp) [https://amzn.to/3RhfKz9].
Notes
[I] A'Sabr, Azizz, !”The Concept of Total Space and the Problem of Reorganizing Regional Spaces”, org Ruth, Lochs and Campos, Nazareno, Imprensa da UFSC, 1995, p 97-98.
[ii] Ab' SABER, Aziz Nacib. Geomorphology of the Urban Site of São Paulo. São Paulo, Editorial Studio, p. 13 2007
[iii] Ab'SABER, Aziz Nacib. Interview with the Roda Viva Program on TV Cultura, on June 08, 1998, p. 15 and 16.
[iv] Burkhardt, 3, p. 215, apud Ernani Chaves, “Culture and Politics: the young Nietzsche and Jakob Burckhardt, Cadernos Nietzsche 9, 2000, p 46
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