At the foot of the Argentine Andes, bulldozers are destroying forests and homes to create soy fields in an area already strewn with rubble from previous waves of destruction and violence. Based on ethnographic research in this region where the mountains give way to the Gran Chaco lowlands, Gastón R. Gordillo shows how geographic space is inseparable from the material, historical, and affective ruptures embodied in debris. His exploration of the significance of rubble encompasses lost cities, derelict train stations, overgrown Jesuit missions and Spanish forts, stranded steamships, mass graves, and razed forests. Examining the effects of these and other forms of debris on the people living on nearby ranches and farms, and in towns, Gordillo emphasizes that for the rural poor, the rubble left in the wake of capitalist and imperialist endeavors is not romanticized ruin but the material manifestation of the violence and dislocation that created it. 
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Based on ethnographic research in the foothills of the Argentine Andes, Gastón R. Gordillo reveals the spatial, historical, and affective ruptures embodied in debris. For the rural poor, the rubble left in the wake of capitalist and imperialist endeavors is not romanticized ruin but the material manifestation of the violence and dislocation that created it.
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Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Constellations 1 Part One. Ghosts of Indians 1. A Haunted Frontier 31 2. On the Edge of the Void 53 Part Two. Lost Cities The Destruction of Space 77 3. Land of Curses and Miracles 85 4. The Ruins of Ruins 111 Part Three. Residues of a Dream World Treks across Fields of Rubble 125 5. Ships Stranded in the Forest 131 6. Bringing a Destroyed Place Back to Life 153 7. Railroads to Nowhere 169 Part Four. The Debris of Violence Bright Objects 185 8. Topographies of Oblivion 191 9. Piles of Bones 209 10. The Return of the Indians 229 Conclusion: We Aren't Afraid of Ruins 253 Notes 271 References 287 Index 303
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"[I]t is the signal merit of Gordillo’s book to remind us of the value of the loose, but productive and fertile, horizontal connections and communities that make up the network of nodes and constellations that we too easily dismiss as 'mere' rubble."
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"At the edges of the dreamscapes put forward by the state and capital, Gastón R. Gordillo shows us the haunted places where phantoms and curses join human bones and broken bricks: rubble. The Argentine Chaco becomes a magical landscape wrapped in multiple pasts and presents. Simultaneously erudite and evocative, Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction remakes the stories we tell about knowledge and history—and the legacy of violent conquest from the Spanish empire to the soy boom."
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822356196
Publisert
2014-08-20
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
454 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Biographical note

Gastón R. Gordillo is Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Landscapes of Devils: Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco, also published by Duke University Press.