Synopses & Reviews
Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazils big citiesplaces like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist João Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the dictionary” she is compiling; and to trace the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form.
As Biehl painstakingly relates Catarinas words to a vanished world and elucidates her condition, we learn of subjectivities unmade and remade under economic pressures, pharmaceuticals as moral technologies, a public common sense that lets the unsound and unproductive die, and anthropologys unique power to work through these juxtaposed fields. Reissued nearly ten years after its initial publication with a new afterword and more compelling photos, Vita is an essential read for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought and ethics in the contemporary world.
Synopsis
"Joand#227;o Biehl's Vita is a greatly arresting work. The tale of Catarina is one that haunts the reader. This book's central character is sure to become an anthropological classic, her humanity reaffirmed by the author."and#151;Arthur Kleinman, author of Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine
Synopsis
Zones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Braziland#8217;s big citiesand#151;places like Vita, where the unwanted, the mentally ill, the sick, and the homeless are left to die. This haunting, unforgettable story centers on a young woman named Catarina, increasingly paralyzed and said to be mad, living out her time at Vita. Anthropologist Joand#227;o Biehl leads a detective-like journey to know Catarina; to unravel the cryptic, poetic words that are part of the and#147;dictionaryand#8221; she is compiling; and to trace the complex network of family, medicine, state, and economy in which her abandonment and pathology took form.
An instant classic, Vita has been widely acclaimed for its bold fieldwork, theoretical innovation, and literary force. Reflecting on how Catarinaand#8217;s life story continues, this updated edition offers the reader a powerful new afterword and gripping new photographs following Biehl and Eskerodand#8217;s return to Vita. Anthropology at its finest, Vita is essential reading for anyone who is grappling with how to understand the conditions of life, thought, and ethics in the contemporary world.
Synopsis
Since its independence in the nineteenth century, the South American state of Colombia has been shaped by decades of bloody political violence. In The Para-State, author Aldo Civico draws on interviews with paramilitary death squads and drug lords to provide a cultural interpretation of the countryand#8217;s history of violence and state control. Between 2003 and 2008, Civico was given unprecedented access to some of Colombiaand#8217;s most notorious leaders of the death squads whose words and life stories he chronicles.and#160; He also conducted interviews with the victims of paramilitaryand#8217;s violence, drug kingpins, and vocal public supporters of the paramilitary groups. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, this riveting work demonstrates how the paramilitaries have in essence become the war machine deployed by the Columbian state to control and maintain its territory and political legitimacy.
About the Author
Aldo Civico is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rutgers University. Between 2005 and 2008 Civico facilitated ceasefire talks between the government of Colombia and the guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN). Senator George Mitchell has called him and#147;one of the most innovative leaders in the conflict resolution field.and#8221;
Table of Contents
Introduction: and#147;Dead Alive, Dead Outside, Alive Insideand#8221;
PART ONE. VITA
A Zone of Social Abandonment
Brazil
Citizenship
PART TWO. CATARINA AND THE ALPHABET
The Life of the Mind
A Society of Bodies
Inequality
Ex-Human
The House and the Animal
and#147;Love is the illusion of the abandonedand#8221;
Social Psychosis
An Illness of Time
God, Sex, and Agency
PART THREE. THE MEDICAL ARCHIVE
Public Psychiatry
Her Life as a Typical Patient
Democratization and the Right to Health
Economic Change and Mental Suffering
Medical Science
End of a Life
Voices
Care and Exclusion
Migration and Model Policies
Women, Poverty, and Social Death
and#147;I am like this because of lifeand#8221;
The Sense of Symptoms
Pharmaceutical Being
PART FOUR. THE FAMILY
Ties
Ataxia
Her House
Brothers
Children, In-Laws, and the Ex-Husband
Adoptive Parents
"To want my body as a medication, my body"
Everyday Violence
PART FIVE. BIOLOGY AND ETHICS
Pain
Human Rights
Value Systems
Gene Expression and Social Abandonment
Family Tree
A Genetic Population
A Lost Chance
PART SIX. THE DICTIONARY
and#147;Underneath was this, which I do not attempt to nameand#8221;
Book I
Book II
Book III
Book IV
Book V
Book VI
Book VII
Book VIII
Book IX
Book X
Book XI
Book XII
Book XIII
Book XIV
Book XV
Book XVI
Book XVII
Book XVIII
Book XIX
Conclusion: and#147;A way to the wordsand#8221;
Postscript: and#147;I am part of the origins, not just of language, but of peopleand#8221;
Afterword
Return to Vita
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index