The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in LimaIn 1996, against the backdrop of Alberto Fujimori’s increasingly corrupt national politics, an older woman in Lima, Peru—part of a group of women street sweepers protesting the privatization of the city’s cleaning services—stripped to the waist in full view of the crowd that surrounded her. Lima had just launched a campaign to revitalize its historic districts, and this shockingly transgressive act was just one of a series of events that challenged the norms of order, cleanliness, and beauty that the renewal effort promoted. The City at Its Limits employs a novel and fluid interweaving of essays and field diary entries as Daniella Gandolfo analyzes the ramifications of this act within the city’s conflicted history and across its class divisions. She builds on the work of Georges Bataille to explore the relation between taboo and transgression, while Peruvian novelist and anthropologist José María Arguedas’s writings inspire her to reflect on her return to her native city in movingly intimate detail. With its multiple perspectives—personal, sociological, historical, and theoretical—The City at Its Limits is a pioneering work on the cutting edge of ethnography. |
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This is such a powerful book about the spacial and imaginary dimensions of marginality. It digs deep into the bizarre and violent experience of urban living. It is gruesome and difficult but ultimately worth it.
Contents
| 1 | |
2 First Diary | 24 |
3 Beauty | 67 |
4 Second Diary | 89 |
5 Filth | 128 |
6 Third Diary | 148 |
7 Nakedness | 192 |
8 Last Entry | 214 |
Notes | 221 |
| 239 | |
Acknowledgments | 251 |
Illustration Credits | 257 |
| 259 | |
Other editions - View all
The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima Daniella Gandolfo No preview available - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
Accursed Share Andrade Andrade’s animal asked Avenida baroque baroque art barriadas Bataille Bataille’s beauty body building bull bullfighting burials Caf´e called Cementerio cemetery Chorrillos churches Cicciolina city center city’s clothes colonial corpse criollo culture Cuzco death defined didn’t door downtown Lima dress El Cercado ESMLL eyes father feeling fight filled filth finally find first floor front Fujimori G´omez garbage H´ector hand human Ibid idea Inca indigenous inside Jir´on Kayapo Kikuyu Lima Lima’s Lime˜nos living looked Manolo Mar´ıa matador mayor mestizo Miraflores morgue morning mother naked nudity o’clock office official Per´u Peru plaza polic´ıa police political protest recuperation refers reflection Rep´ublica ritual Se˜nora Roberta se˜norita SITRAMUN social Spanish specifically stopped street sweepers stripping Surquillo taboo Tamayo taxicab things thought tion traffic transgression turned Uhuru Park urban Vulture-man walked walls window Wipper woman women workers writes
Bibliographic information
| Title | The City at Its Limits: Taboo, Transgression, and Urban Renewal in Lima |
| Author | Daniella Gandolfo |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press, 2009 |
| ISBN | 0226280993, 9780226280998 |
| Length | 288 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / Latin America / South America Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social Social Science / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |