(74) (PDF) Redefining Garbage in Contemporary Buenos Aires: The Imagination of Crisis and its Aesthetic Responses_Gisela Heffes | Gisela Heffes - Academia.edu





Redefining Garbage in Contemporary Buenos Aires: The Imagination of Crisis and its Aesthetic Responses_Gisela Heffes

Gisela Heffes

140 ViewsPaperRank: 3.925 Pages

1 File ▾



Latin American Studies,

Urban Studies,

Environmental Sustainability,

Garbage

Original PDF (50 minute read)

Summary

scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd. scribd.

Brœjula

Volume 11 ¥ 2017

Enfoques

__________________________

Redefining Garbage in Contemporary Buenos Aires: The Imagination of Crisis and its Aesthetic Responses

Gisela Heffes

Rice University The phenomenon of waste, what we discard and what we simply call Òtrash,Ó Òjunk,Ó Òleftovers,Ó and Òcrap,Ó is not defined by any inherent characteristics but by assigned and imposed categories. In

Rubbish Theory

(1979), British anthropologist Michael Thompson points out that objects designated as trashÑwhatever has been given a ÒdeathÓ certificateÑcan remain in this dormant state, deprived of time and value until they have the chance to be ÒdiscoveredÓ and even transferred into a ÒdurableÓ category which includes

An earlier presentation draft of this article was delivered at the Centre for Latin American Studies at The University of Cambridge (UK) on 30 January 2012, and an expanded version can be found in my book

Pol’ticas de la destrucci—n/PoŽticas de la preservaci—n. Apuntes para una lectura (eco)cr’tica del medio ambiente en AmŽrica Latina

(Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2013).

Gisela Heffes, 2017. Used with permission.

You Might Also Like...

Crisis, imaginación y estética: espacio urbano y la resignificación de los desech…

Gisela Heffes •113 Views

Trash Matters: Residual Culture in Latin America_Gisela Heffes

Gisela Heffes •95 Views

The Littered City: Trash and Neoliberal Urban Space in El aire, Bariloche, and La v…

Micah McKay •34 Views

Trash and the Coming Community: Portrayals of Trash and Trash Workers in…

Micah McKay •11 Views

Enfoques

Heffes ¥ Redefining Garbage in Contemporary Buenos Aires

Brœjula

¥ Volume 11 ¥ 2017

works of art and antiques; these are objects that conserve or even increase their value over time (7). This change of categoryÑwhich, beyond material culture, can be related to systems of ideas and knowledgeÑis linked, according to Thompson, to a change in ownership and is therefore connected to the social relations of power. In equal measure, this way of looking at things with respect to their old functions allows new values and meanings for trash. Considering the arbitrary and multilayered nature of trash that Thompson evokes, I would like to focus on the figure of

cartoneros

or Òcardboard scavengers,Ó a growing phenomenon throughout Latin America that has been drawing the attention of literary critics, sociologists and anthropologists as well as writers and artists over the last fifteen years or so

The central thrust of this essay is that the

cartoneros

phenomenon highlights that the impetus behind recycling in Latin America differs starkly from what one finds in the developed world. Whereas the recycling and reuse of objects in the US and Europe typically reflects an ideological commitment to better or improve the environment, Latin American recycling is more often than not motivated by the straightforward economic need for survival. To a certain degree,

cartoneros

emerge as a possible example of how to re-imagine both environmental policy and justice as a set of evolving community relationships, personalizing the process of recycling through a more communal and less individualistic endeavor, one more akin to labor practices. If garbage is a relational concept, a relative one that comprises notions of value that change from one society to another, as Thompson rightly has demonstrated,

You Might Also Like...

From ‘‘cartoneros’’ to ‘‘recolectores urbanos’’. The changing rhetoric and urba…

Carolina Sternberg •351 Views

The Reappropriation of Poverty and the Art of "Making Do" in Contemporary Argentin…

Victor Goldgel-Carballo •143 Views

Neoliberal Reform and Urban Space: The Cartoneros of Buenos Aires, 2001-2005

Themis Chronopoulos •53 Views

Negotiating Place and Value: Geographies of Waste and Scavenging in Buenos Aires

Risa Whitson •121 Views

Enfoques

Heffes ¥ Redefining Garbage in Contemporary Buenos Aires

Brœjula

¥ Volume 11 ¥ 2017

garbage can also operate as a critique of consumption which is contingent upon the specific place where the trash is produced and to which it is addressed. In this sense, and as I hope to demonstrate throughout this article, (environmental) innovation could also emerge hand in hand with crisis and socio-economic degradation. Before exploring the cultural production that has been preoccupied with waste and its reuse in Buenos Aires since 2000, I will first offer a brief overview of earlier aesthetic responses to garbage. In closing, I will consider some of the political, cultural and theoretical implications of the

cartonero

phenomenon. The story of people who live in garbage dumps is not new. Ever since human beings have lived on earth they have generated, produced, manufactured, excreted, separated, discarded, and eliminated all different forms of waste, as Martin Melosi has correctly pointed out in his 1981 classic

Garbage in the Cities

. Nevertheless, garbage has not always been a problem, or at least a problem of the scale and magnitude it represents in contemporary societies: throughout history, agrarian societies have successfully avoided solid waste pollution and contamination. Therefore, Melosi signals that trash is an urban problem, and although it varies in degree and intensity, it is exacerbated by the limits that habitable space implies, such as population density (1). It is in this scenario of environmental contamination articulated as an urban issue that I attempt to analyze those textual and visual representations in which the subjects, besides collecting trash for its later use, whether through sale

You Might Also Like...

Journal of latin american studies / Struggles over the Use of Public Space: E…

Natalia Cosacov, Mariano Perelman •130 Vi…