Argentine psychoanalysis as gentrifier: The case of Palermo

In: Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Band 7, Heft 2, S. 109-132

Abstract

This article examines the case of Palermo, Buenos Aires's largest and trendiest neighbourhood, and claims that psychoanalysis has acted since the mid-1970s as one of the area's gentrifiers. Based on the premise that temporality is embedded in spatial categories and that, therefore, cities are mobile phenomena, the article focuses on two interrelated spatiotemporal layers of psychoanalysis-based gentrification. It first examines the arrival and settlement of psychoanalytic associations between 1975 and 2005 to argue that analysts were important actors in Palermo's real estate transformation. Second, it explores how contemporary real estate brochures, magazines, blogs, newspapers and tourist websites create the idea that analysts gave birth to the neighbourhood and thus erase the contributions of the Black population who had lived there in the nineteenth century and of the workers who had been a vital part of the area prior to the analysts' arrival. The article also looks at the neighbourhood contemporary aesthetics to highlight that psychoanalysis is now an integral part of a spatialized identity that reaffirms socio-economic exclusion, while displaying progressive attitudes.