Urban Chiaroscuro: Rio de Janeiro and the Politics of Nightfall

FAIN: FT-59122-11

Amy Chazkel
Columbia University (Flushing, NY 11367-1575)

This project departs from my earlier research on the social and cultural history of the conflicts over urban space to focus on a little explored phenomenon: urban time. Specifically, my book-in-progress examines the changing meaning of the threshold between day and night during the long nineteenth century in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Before the epoch of public illumination, nightfall had a decisive meaning. In the eyes of the law in the early- and mid-nineteenth century, an artisan carrying a tool became a criminal wielding a weapon once the sun set. Curfews intended to keep order in the city targeted errant slaves and their companions and collaborators, real or potential. Changes in the built environment and urban culture in the early twentieth century attenuated the legal and political importance of nightfall. However, I will argue, the long history of the distinction between day and night bore a lasting impact on city's legal culture into the twentieth century.

Associated Products

“Imagens nostálgicas: Os ascendedores de lampião na Revista Light" (Book Section)
Title: “Imagens nostálgicas: Os ascendedores de lampião na Revista Light"
Author: Amy Chazkel
Editor: Andrea Casa Nova Maia
Abstract: This chapter analyzes the image of the lamplighter as it appeared in the pages of the Brazilian illustrated magazine Revista Light in the early and mid-twentieth century. The nostalgic yet disdainful depiction of these folkloric figures reflects urban Brazilians' collective understanding of urban modernization, labor, and race.
Year: 2016
Primary URL: http://www.7letras.com.br/o-mundo-do-trabalho-nas-paginas-das-revistas-ilustradas.html
Primary URL Description: publisher's dedicated page for the book.
Access Model: print
Publisher: Editora 7 Letras
Book Title: O mundo do trabalho nas páginas das revistas ilustradas
ISBN: 9788542104158

“O lado escuro do poder municipal: A mão de obra forçada e o toque de recolher no Rio de Janeiro oitocentista” (Article)
Title: “O lado escuro do poder municipal: A mão de obra forçada e o toque de recolher no Rio de Janeiro oitocentista”
Author: Amy Chazkel
Abstract: This article discusses the way in which the official treatment of the night time in the first decades of Brazilian independence in the country's capital city sheds light on the way municipal power functioned.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/mundosdotrabalho/article/view/1984-9222.2013v5n9p31
Primary URL Description: journal's website
Access Model: open access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Mundos de Trabalho
Publisher: Mundos do Trabalho

“The Invention of Night: Visibility and Violence After Dark in Rio de Janeiro” (Book Section)
Title: “The Invention of Night: Visibility and Violence After Dark in Rio de Janeiro”
Author: Amy Chazkel
Editor: David Carey
Editor: Gema Santamaria
Abstract: In early- and mid-nineteenth- century Rio de Janeiro, the setting sun daily triggered a legal regime distinct from the one that prevailed in daylight. Across time, Brazilian legal codes and law enforcement officials invoked the inability to “see a man’s face” after dark to impose dramatic restrictions on public rights and to differentiate between persons who were ostensibly equal before the law. Considering how the law apprehends the daily cycle of darkness and light, this essay demonstrates how criminal law and its agents relied on human sight not just to garner evidence and patrol the streets but also to justify a nightly suspension of rights, from Brazil’s independence in the 1820s through the early twentieth century when electrical lighting penetrated the capital city, and beyond. From the nineteenth-century statutes that made reference to the night as a juridically distinct time to the curfews that went into effect at nightfall to keep order in the city (with a particular focus on errant slaves and their alleged companions and collaborators), the way the law treated the daily transition to darkness changed over time. Yet one can also trace fascinating consistencies in the sociolegal construction of nighttime over the course of the long nineteenth century. What, this essay asks, were the social, cultural, and legal effects of this nightly state of emergency? And how do the legal justifications for, public debates about, and violations of the curfew bring to light assumptions about visual perception already built into the law in nineteenth-century Brazil?
Year: 2017
Access Model: print
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Book Title: Violence and Crime in Latin America: Politics and Representations

“The Invention of Night: Visibility and Violence After Dark in Rio de Janeiro” (Book Section)
Title: “The Invention of Night: Visibility and Violence After Dark in Rio de Janeiro”
Author: Amy Chazkel
Editor: David Carey
Editor: Gema Santamaria
Abstract: In early- and mid-nineteenth- century Rio de Janeiro, the setting sun daily triggered a legal regime distinct from the one that prevailed in daylight. Across time, Brazilian legal codes and law enforcement officials invoked the inability to “see a man’s face” after dark to impose dramatic restrictions on public rights and to differentiate between persons who were ostensibly equal before the law. Considering how the law apprehends the daily cycle of darkness and light, this essay demonstrates how criminal law and its agents relied on human sight not just to garner evidence and patrol the streets but also to justify a nightly suspension of rights, from Brazil’s independence in the 1820s through the early twentieth century when electrical lighting penetrated the capital city, and beyond. From the nineteenth-century statutes that made reference to the night as a juridically distinct time to the curfews that went into effect at nightfall to keep order in the city (with a particular focus on errant slaves and their alleged companions and collaborators), the way the law treated the daily transition to darkness changed over time. Yet one can also trace fascinating consistencies in the sociolegal construction of nighttime over the course of the long nineteenth century. What, this essay asks, were the social, cultural, and legal effects of this nightly state of emergency? And how do the legal justifications for, public debates about, and violations of the curfew bring to light assumptions about visual perception already built into the law in nineteenth-century Brazil?
Year: 2017
Access Model: print
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Book Title: Violence and Crime in Latin America: Politics and Representations

“’The Freedom to Come and Go’: Toward a New Understanding of Urban Temporalities and Rights in Latin America” (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: “’The Freedom to Come and Go’: Toward a New Understanding of Urban Temporalities and Rights in Latin America”
Abstract: This presentation considers how the nighttime in nineteenth-century urban Brazil became a time where constitutionally guaranteed civil and political rights were attenuated.
Author: Amy Chazkel
Date: 5/6/2016
Location: Stanford University

“The History of Nightfall: The View from a South Atlantic City” (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: “The History of Nightfall: The View from a South Atlantic City”
Abstract: This lecture considers what nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro can contribute to our understanding of the history of nighttime.
Author: Amy Chazkel
Date: 4/14/2016
Location: University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana

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