The locomotive, the train and the railroad

Image and memory of a masculinity narrated in southern Brazil

Abstract

This article focuses on the production of masculinity in railway work, from the interpretative approach that privileges temporality, narrated memory, image and imaginary. The research is based on the material produced in a three-year ethnography (2015-2018) between retired railway workers and their families living in the city of Pelotas, southern Brazil. I interpret the narrative identity of a retired engineer, Orlando Chagas, giving vent to the images that constitute this act of "presenting himself": his collection of photographs, a Hollywood action film and the oral narrative itself. The genre, in the machinist's memoirs of work, is attributed to the train and swings from the feminine, "the locomotive" to the masculine, "the train." While "the locomotive" may have different affectionate nicknames, "the train" is always in struggle or duel with the machinist, a struggle in which the victory of man represents the affirmation of professional talent, the masculine condition and the duration of the self, discontinuation of their profession.