I have been writing about violence and subjectivity for my forthcoming monograph. This led me to reflect on the value placed on a life and how significant a fully realised representation is. It may seem obvious to say, but individual lives can become invisible when the numbers of victims grow. Therefore, acknowledging the subjectivity of…
Tag: Violence
Review: Los cárteles no existen – Oswaldo Zavala
Los cárteles no existen: narcotráfico y cultura en México [Cartels don’t exist: drug trafficking and culture in Mexico]* (Barcelona: Malpaso, 2018) by Oswaldo Zavala is a deliberately provocative book with a clear central thesis: cartels exist discursively and have been rhetorically constructed thanks to powerful interests, but do not exist as they are popularly understood…
Screen Violence: A Reflection
I recently blogged about how war photographs are used as a way of efficient storytelling in a Portuguese film (http://www.niamhthornton.net/death-on-film-how-far-can-you-go/). In response to that I had some interesting discussions on Twitter and a decision with Fiona Noble to write blog posts on our shared interest in screen violence. In the process of writing we have…
On death and its representation in Mexico
There is a frequent trope in reporting about Mexico that suggests that Mexicans have a special relationship with death. The Mexican poet and essayist, Octavio Paz wrote an influential essay in his Laberinto de la soledad/Labyrinth of Solitude (1950) exploring the particularities of the Mexican attitude to death through the lens of the annual day of the…