Rubble: The Afterlife of Destruction

by Gaston R. Gordillo

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.
 

Genres: Anthropology, History

336 pages, Paperback

First published July 28, 2014

Reviews

[Elham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gordillo, the author has a fascinating encounter with the destroyed city of Esteco, and the definitions provided are also interesting. The distinction between “ruin” and “rubble” is carefully considered in many parts, especially in relation to the destruction of a place and its reuse for another purpose, like the forest over Esteco being bulldozed.

Gordillo’s fundamental questions were particularly striking to me:

What happened to this rubble after the initial destruction?
How do the locals perceive and live with the ruins and rubble?
Are these ruins merely dead objects, or do “life” and “politics” still flow within them?
In fact, Gordillo wanted to see the ruins of Esteco in the collective memory and emotions of the local people, and here, these ruins even appear in religion and politics. The key question is whether the rubble of Esteco is merely a dead thing or a living entity that impacts the bodies of the locals — and even Gordillo himself.

From the perspective of the locals, Esteco is a cursed city, an old colonial Spanish city from the 17th century that was destroyed by an earthquake. However, it is not the earthquake itself but rather a curse placed upon the city's inhabitants that is seen as the cause.

The locals make use of the rubble of Esteco for construction purposes, yet at the same time, they fear entering this area. In reality, the rubble has a living relationship with the local people, to the point that every year in September, during the consecration ceremony of Esteco, both the locals and church officials participate, attempting to cleanse the site of its curse.

What fascinated me was the notion that the precise location of Esteco is unclear, with multiple, conflicting accounts of its exact whereabouts. Nonetheless, none of them is definitively Esteco, even though the author is present in an Esteco that is a destroyed city, where a forest had grown over the ruins and was later bulldozed, creating a “ruin upon ruin.”

At the same time, the church and the state are working to turn Esteco into a historical site for tourism. A cross is even erected on the edge of Esteco, which goes missing in the middle of the narrative and then reappears in Chapter Four.

Gordillo physically engages with the field in this research and repeatedly mentions how, upon entering Esteco, his body became tense, or he felt the ground beneath his feet was unstable — which, in a way, demonstrates the bodily connection of the researcher to the field.

[M · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic ethnographic analysis of the presence (or absence) of physical remnants of the past in northwest Argentina, even if the critical theory sections sometimes wandered to strange places.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much needed intervention to re-animate scholars' examinations of meaning and place. Gordillo offers a powerful way to look at how rubble can enter our worlds as "constellations" of "bright points." I also enjoyed his reading of Casey on the void to apply towards indigenous anti-state spaces. The only negative was that at times I couldn't help but think that some of the spatial thinking was inconsistent, that is, I felt like Gordillo was trying to argue away gaps in why, at some points, locals would celebrate state space, or were unaware of the rubble that was supposedly so compelling. Still, I think the book was largely a success, and I hope it will interest more anthropologists in the rich work in geography on memory and place/landscape.