Acknowledgements (and Some Welcome Words to the Reader)
A Kind of City
Instead of soil or a sample from nature, whence arguments, ideas, and expressions grow spontaneously or through their intrinsic virtues – as is often assumed – a book is rather similar to a city. Through such cities, not only do mental forms coexist and move about, but also the flesh-and-blood individuals who shape and drive them.
Among the responsibilities of the so-called authorial function is the political mandate of introducing predecessors and collaborators to the newly arrived reader. I start with the first. I do not want to transfer responsibilities or attribute judgements and polemics – which are my own initiative – but recognise the irrigating role of oral history, of the testimonies and reports that motivate and enliven all steps of the research. I am aware, of course, that the action of listening and the memory of a historian who collected such observations serve to modify them and imbue them with a specific aspect. But it will be ultimately up to the reader to raise the doubts and replies required for the critical game of reading.
I shall begin by mentioning some friends and their inspiring works: Amilcar de Castro, Antonio Dias, Arthur Piza, my all-time companion Carmela Gross, and Paulo Mendes da Rocha – whose architecture, prioritising the city, materialises – with lucidity, sobriety and lyrical simplicity – examples of how to conceive of equipment and buildings for common use. In the working dialogue between Carmela and Paulo, which is not infrequently associated in the same place (Brazilian Museum of Sculpture (MuBE), São Paulo, 2017; Social Service of Commerce-SESC 24 de Maio, São Paulo, 2017), the principle of citizenship emerges as a basic and common right of the anonymous on an equal footing with the illustrious: concrete right to access and transit through the same places, of coexisting in the city, after all, as a common place and, in principle, universalised.
The Perspective of the City
I do not evoke such a principle gratuitously or abstractly. Brasília is the main theme of the first two studies collected here and it reappears as a watershed in some passages of the book’s closing chapter (Chapter 13). From the point of view of architecture and urban planning, Brasília is an example of how the exercise of so-called creative talent in Brazil has historically served the reproduction of iniquities – in the face of which the architecture of Paulo Mendes da Rocha demonstrates its potential for critical negativity. In addition, the links between art and the city were emphasised by Argan throughout his work, which constitutes the theme of the tenth study of this book. Nevertheless, in addition to the chapter dedicated to Argan’s work, the connection between art and the city serves as a statement of principle and introductory explanation to the fundamental perspective of the texts collected here. In fact, a prevalent point of view in the studies consists in taking as an anomaly the appropriation of art by individuals and criticising the self-confinement of art modes and forms, which consents in their banishment to non-universalised or private spaces. In short, considering art always from a common and collective perspective, as living work inherent to the city, is one of the modes of articulation of these studies.
The Angle of the Peripheries
In this sense, another specification can be put forth. In addition to establishing the links of visual practices and forms with the development of the historical-social process and with class pressures and interests, the studies seek to specifically establish the angle of peripheral issues, within the contrasted and uneven but combined dynamic of the ceaseless confrontations between interests and modes of the peripheries and the centre.
In order to develop links and arteries that allow the reader to reflexively move from one chapter to another, I resorted to articulating materials and modes – including the notions of formation, system and dismantling, which are historically indicated and attributed in the footnotes and bibliography. I hope, like any researcher who also works as a teacher, that such ways are clearly visible and offer fluidity. But, in fact, it is up to the reader or passer-by, moving through the streets of this book, to have the last say.
Meetings and Debates
The sole use of texts and working within the retreat of a library hardly help achieve more than an abstract scheme. For the lines and arrows on a piece of paper and primary hypotheses to take real shape, the heat of meetings, conversations, and debates is essential. It is necessary to listen to and bring in the many voices and sounds that form the contradictory complexity of a city. There were too many occasions for that during the 15 years that separate the initial presentation of the first study, in April 2002, in an auditorium in São João da Boa Vista, in the inland of São Paulo state, from the current form of this book. As such, they are impossible to count or summarise. But I can say that I shared many of the most striking occasions with Chico de Oliveira, Paulo Arantes, Paulo Sérgio Duarte, Juan Antonio Ramírez – my unforgettable Madrid-based friend from Málaga – and with my life partner Carmela Gross. There were many others too – to be fair, the many I am unable to mention here.
In fact, how many talks and situations translate into a book? The threads of meetings and conversations gradually unfold and multiply, engendering new fabrics, arising over the course of the many activities and discussions with my students at the University of São Paulo (USP) and in Latin American universities in which I had the good fortune and pleasure to visit and work, in Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Santiago, and with the Colombians I met at USP. The unsettling experience of the peripheral condition – ‘within the rarefied dialectic between not being and being someone else’1 – brings new angles with every testimony one hears.
I also shared the always thought-provoking re-discussion of the issues of late peripheral formation, with my friends from the DESFORMAS centre and, in the last two years, with my research companions of the Aesthetics of Turbulence work group: Carmela, Ana Paula Pacheco, Jorge Grespan and Marcos Soares – among the original members of the DESFORMAS centre; and Steve Edwards, Gail Day, Juan Grigera and Peter Thomas, among my friends from HM (Historical Materialism), who have joined the discussion in recent years in a variety of ways, at HM meetings and the encounters arising from them. I owe a lot of my understanding of certain specific signs of dismantling in the context of global economy and work relations to some friends – Ricardo Antunes, Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Jr. and Jorge Souto Maior – companions of struggles against the arbitrariness and infamies perpetrated by the privatist and anti-democratic rage of the rectorates, first of all, of the USP, but also of the two other public universities of São Paulo. However, among all interlocutors and comrades-in-arms, I would like to highlight the lesson in struggle, resistance, and collective work that I get shoulder to shoulder with companions from the USP Workers’ Union (SINTUSP). From such lessons I see the embryo of a new university – not like the one we know today, a reproducer of iniquities and segregation, but one that is genuinely at the service of the great majorities that are, now, as before, excluded and relegated in Brazil, not only from higher education, but from the sense and benefit of most of the research developed by those of us who, in one way or another, find ourselves active within the current system.
Acknowledgements
At the HM Book Series I owe all sorts of attention and acts of generosity to David Craven – who introduced me to this vibrant circle of work and debates; to Steve Edwards – my first editor and constant interlocutor, who brought Alex Potts into this project; to Juan Grigera – the Latin-American books editor on the HM board, a most supportive companion who took care of many aspects of the book, fraternally advocating for its cause; to Alex Potts, my very welcome, attentive, insightful and dialectical prefacer, who granted me the honour of going through the texts and providing his notes and comments; and to Simon Mussell and Danny Hayward, who put all their skill, finesse, and efforts into reviewing quickly and with great subtlety these texts, keeping their character, and at the same time adapting them to the fluencies of English.
At BN (National Library) of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, I owe much to the attention and democratic disposition of Fábio Lima, associated with his commitment to the publication of Brazilian works abroad. This book would not exist without the funds from the programme.
Other institutions, among which the support from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) stands out, subsidised the previous versions of the studies collected here. These many forms of support are indicated, one by one, in the ‘Credits’ section immediately following.
I would also like to pay homage to other companions. The daily constant rhythm of their tasks combines with mine, forming the working site, indispensable for the book project to materialise amidst a lively, dense, and collective atmosphere, in which the works of many combine and interact: Renato Rezende, my translator (assisted by Martin Heuser) whose participation was decisive for the project to overcome all difficulties and meet very tight deadlines, due to mishaps prior to his collaboration; Gustavo Motta, a companion in many parts of this research for years, and a collaborator and friend who wrote, with unique zeal, the bibliography, searching for translations into English of the Brazilian texts cited, in addition to also finding and establishing links to the visual works cited. Corner-by-corner, along the book’s argumentative pathways, readers will have in their hands information collected as if in a city guide and will be able to evaluate by themselves how important and decisive the contribution of Gustavo Motta’s research was, to give specific density to the argumentation, or even to concretely enable its refutation. However, Gustavo Motta’s collaboration, in addition to being specific, has reached a higher level. Thus, on crucial occasions, seeing a certain disorder in the relation between chapters and predicting some confusion for readers, he suggested organising the book in three sections containing groups of texts, as indicated in the table of contents. Natalie Roth, my day-to-day assistant and collaborator, besides taking care of the paper files of the book project and collecting varied data on the internet, protected me from the inhospitable and mortifying light of computers. In fact, she spared my eyes as much as possible, allowing this sexagenarian researcher – an animal from a different era and, to make things worse, with retinal sequelae – to remain as long as possible in the pleasant ecosystem of a sea of paper, pens and pencils.
The fraternal interventions of friends from Paris were very often decisive as well, enabling presentations and occasions for debates, or welcoming, reading and supporting with suggestions, in varied ways and at many moments, the work in progress over 15 years that included many work stays in France: François Albera – mon cher camarade préfacier and éditeur – and Régis Michel – mon frère, in many ways. I also wish to thank mes très chers amis Catherine Monbeig Goguel, France Vernier, Geneviève Morel, Jean-Philippe Chimot, Marie-Catherine Sahut, Paul Levayer and Serge Bianchi. Salut et fraternité!
See Chapter 7, note 27, in this volume.