An Uncomfortable Absence: The Meanings of Destruction/Demolition and Popular Presence in the Patrimonialization of Cotton Manufacturing Rodolfo Crespi, in the City of São Paulo.

The Cotton Goods Manufacturing Rodolfo Crespi, located in the old working-class neighborhood of Mooca, in São Paulo city, was the protagonist of four important conflicts in local and national history: the first general strike of 1917 (LOPREATO, 1997); the civil wars of 1924 (COHEN, 2007) and 1932; and its refunctionalization into a hypermarket in 2004 (RUFINONI, 2005).

Its refunctionalization and preservation mobilized media, neighborhood's middle class and institutions of heritage and justice in a conflict with the hypermarket. While it led to the destruction of the internal part of the building and its “scenographic” restoration (CARRILHO, 2007), this episode also constituted a way of constructing identity and collective memory (HALBWACHS, 1997), repressing a hidden subject: the popular presence.

According to Dolff-Bonekamper (2008), conflicts around refunctionalization/preservation reveal a “discord value”, in which present positive values of heritage cannot repress social and political disputes of the past.

Thus, understanding the processes of symbolic appropriation of buildings and urban space involves the articulation of their multiple temporalities, which occurs through the ways of “presentification” of the past, involving their relationships between architectural forms and their uses (LEPETIT, 2001), and by “spatial marking”, which articulates patrimonialization, demolition/destruction and remembrance/commemoration (VESCHAMBRE, 2008).

We will address how partial destruction and demolition of the Manufacturing in different historical conflicts produced forms of symbolic violence (VESCHAMBRE, 2008), inscribed in the representation of popular presence in urban memory. It swings between instrumentality, discomfort and effacement of the working class (1917), of civilian victims (1924), and the homeless population and the housing movement (2004).

Meanwhile, we will analyze how the association of images of the bombing with the “scenographic” restoration reveals a paradoxical “anachronic” survival (DIDI-HUBERMAN, 2012): refunctionalization as an unusual symbol of the “repair” of destruction, but also as traces of the continuity of this destruction in the present.