Arquivo urbano de Pau da Lima : fragmentos para narrar coletivamente a história de um bairro

Abstract

The dissertation “Pau da Lima Urban Archive: fragments for collectively narrating the history of a neighborhood” proposes a reflection on the modes of production of urban history based on memories, popular narratives, and non-institutional archives. The starting point is the Pau da Lima neighborhood, located in Salvador, Bahia. The research is based on the premise that the city is traversed by multiple memories and that family and community collections are devices for writing potential histories (Azoulay, 2019) of the city. Using oral history and critical storytelling as methodological resources, the study is based on interviews with residents who share their memories of daily life and the transformations of the neighborhood. The figure of the archive, addressed here, endorses the challenge to the traditional definition of the archive as a public institution for catalogued documentary repositories and approaches a daily practice of archiving as the collective collection and gathering of fragments or traces (Benjamin, 2006) that aims to inform about a neighborhood in Salvador. This neighborhood, like many others, has its own particularities, both positive and negative. The dissertation is structured as an archive in progress, bringing together and relating voices, images, institutional documents, as well as periodicals and printed materials. By valuing local knowledge and silenced histories, the work contributes to the discussion on the right to the city, expanding the possible meanings of archive, territory, and urban history. Thus, the research reaffirms the political and poetic potential of urban memories as part of a toolkit to reinscribe popular neighborhoods at the center of the city's symbolic and material disputes.