Synopses & Reviews
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, Gastandoacute;n 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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Review
andquot;At the edges of the dreamscapes put forward by the state and capital, Gastandoacute;n 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 historyandmdash;and the legacy of violent conquest from the Spanish empire to the soy boom.andquot;
Review
andquot;This stunningly original rethinking of space through negativity represents a major intervention in theories of ruination, memory, and history. Gastandoacute;n R. Gordillo gives us a subaltern and democratizing theory of ruins as rubble that is grounded in rich ethnographic observation. Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction is a book that is simultaneously wildly imaginative and rigorously analytical.andquot;
Review
andquot;[I]t is the signal merit of Gordilloandrsquo;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 and#39;mereand#39; rubble.andquot;
Review
andldquo;Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction is theoretically dense and richly illustrated with diagrams and photographs. The ethnographic detail is often engrossing, while the overall argument challenges heritage and regional specialists to engage in more penetrating analysis of how historic forces of destruction shape the world and add to the rubble that piles up along the way.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Based on ethnographic research in the foothills of the Argentine Andes, Gastandoacute;n 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.
About the Author
Gastón R. Gordillo is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is coauthor of El río y la frontera: movilizaciones aborígenes, obras públicas y mercosur en el Pilcomayo.