GANDOLFO, D
In 1996, against the backdrop of Alberto Fujimoris increasingly corrupt national politics, an older woman in Lima, Perupart of a group of women street sweepers protesting the privatization of the citys cleaning servicesstripped 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 citys 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 Arguedass writings inspire her to reflect on her return to her native city in movingly intimate detail. With its multiple perspectivespersonal, sociological, historical, and theoreticalThe City at Its Limits is a pioneering work on the cutting edge of ethnography.
