The violent management of peace and beauty in Rio de Janeiro

In the context of urban mapping, the question of what kind of city will be represented on the map is always profoundly connected not only to the question of the kinds of landscapes, buildings and structures that will be part of it, but also and mainly to the of the bodies and the movements that will shape these landscapes. This chapter explores the way the distinction between regions of violence and chaos on the one side, and peace and beauty on the other, conceals a systematic and violent of ‘appearances’ that often results in the abandonment and/or eradication of undesirable places and bodies from the urban map. Urbicide, as employed here, not only the destruction of buildings and places in the city, but also the rejection and potential destruction of particular forms and expressions of life. This investigation entails a consideration of the symbolic dimensions of beauty and peace, well as a problematization of the aesthetics embedded in two different processes (the removal and the pacification of favelas in Rio de Janeiro) through which only some bodies have been allowed to live (or ‘appear’) for the sake of order, peace, and beauty in the ‘marvelous’ city.