Vita: Life in a Zone of Social AbandonmentZones of social abandonment are emerging everywhere in Brazil’s big cities—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 Joćo 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. An instant classic, Vita has been widely acclaimed for its bold fieldwork, theoretical innovation, and literary force. Reflecting on how Catarina’s life story continues, this updated edition offers the reader a powerful new afterword and gripping new photographs following Biehl and Eskerod’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. |
Contents
Dead alive dead outside alive inside | 1 |
A Zone of Social Abandonment | 35 |
Brazil | 46 |
Citizenship | 56 |
Life of the Mind | 71 |
Inequality | 82 |
The House and the Animal | 92 |
Love is the illusion of the abandoned | 99 |
Everyday Violence | 265 |
Pain | 271 |
Value Systems | 278 |
Family Tree | 292 |
A Lost Chance | 307 |
Underneath was this which I do not attempt to name | 313 |
Book XII | 337 |
Book XIII | 339 |
Public Psychiatry | 123 |
Democratization and the Right to Health | 130 |
Economic Change and Mental Suffering | 138 |
Medical Science | 146 |
Voices | 159 |
Care and Exclusion | 163 |
Migration and Model Policies | 171 |
Women Poverty and Social Death | 179 |
I am like this because of life | 187 |
Ties | 209 |
Ataxia | 218 |
Her House | 229 |
Brothers | 235 |
Adoptive Parents | 248 |
To want my body as a medication my body | 257 |
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Common terms and phrases
abandonment Ademar Adriana Adriana Petryna Alessandra Altamir Anderson Anthropology antipsychotic Arthur Kleinman asked ataxia began Biehl biopolitical biperiden body Brazil brothers Caridade Cata Catarina Catieki clinical Clóvis condition death dictionary disease divorce doctor drug economic ethnographic ex-husband family members father haloperidol happened health post House of Mental human rights husband infirmary institutions Jacques Lacan Jardim Joćo legs levomepromazine live Machado-Joseph medicine mental health mentally ill Moraes mother Nilson Novo Hamburgo nurse Ondina Oscar overmedicated patients Paulo person pharmaceutical pharmakos political Porto Alegre problem Psychiatric Hospital psychiatrist psychosis psychotic reality recalled rheumatism rina Sćo Paulo schizophrenia social stay story subjectivity suffering symptoms talk Tamara things thought tion told took Torben treatment University Press Urbano Vania Veena Das Vita Vita’s voice volunteers walk woman words worker writing wrote