The Slum and the City: Culture and Dissidence in the Villas Miseria of Buenos Aires

In this forwardlooking, insightful, and enjoyable book, Agnese Codebò takes a carefully curated selection of these artworks as a window through which to look into villas. ― Bulletin of Hispanic Studies

The Slum and the City is a brilliant book that challenges not only the historical boundaries between the formal and informal neighborhoods of Buenos Aires but also those that separate ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture. Codebò masterfully restores the unity of a complex metropolis, without losing sight of the contradictions that cross this particular urban space. — Valeria Snitcofsky, University of Buenos Aires

By situating proletarian culture and grassroots politics at the center of her analysis, Codebò offers a paradigm-shifting account of the contemporary cultural history of Buenos Aires. Far from being marginal sites, slums are constitutive of the city’s―and the nation’s―history. They are key sites of knowledge production, political organizing, and artistic expression, as Codebò demonstrates in this fascinating and important book. — Jennifer S. Ponce de León, author of Another Aesthetics Is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War

Agnese Codebò’s superb book, The Slum and the City, consists of a rigorous itinerary through the paradigmatic space of the villa miseria in Buenos Aires. In the convergence of cultural figurations, where the aesthetic and the social intersect, Codebò’s book finds the generative nature of urban spaces that to date had not been analyzed in their vast complexity. — Gisela Heffes, author of Visualizing Loss in Latin America: Biopolitics, Waste, and the Urban Environment