Proposal Title
From Ethical Distance to Empathetic Proximity: Gendered Representations of Femicide in Narratives of the Mexican-U.S. Border
Location
Room 2-048
Start Date
9-11-2018 2:00 PM
End Date
9-11-2018 3:00 PM
Presentation Type
Paper
Abstract
This paper engages the representation of violence against women on the Mexico-U.S. border through the relation between space and empathy – specifically, through the movement between distance and proximity with respect to various authors’ literary treatment of the femicide crisis. Since 1993 the bodies of hundreds (if not thousands) of women and girls have been found violated and brutalized in abandoned lots in Ciudad Juárez and the surrounding desert, just across the border from El Paso – one of the safest cities in the United States. Here I will analyze the representation of femicidal violence in two border texts: Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666(2004) and indigenous Chicana poet ire’ne lara silva’s short story “la huesera, or flesh to bone” (2013; orthographic convention is the author’s).
From Ethical Distance to Empathetic Proximity: Gendered Representations of Femicide in Narratives of the Mexican-U.S. Border
Room 2-048
This paper engages the representation of violence against women on the Mexico-U.S. border through the relation between space and empathy – specifically, through the movement between distance and proximity with respect to various authors’ literary treatment of the femicide crisis. Since 1993 the bodies of hundreds (if not thousands) of women and girls have been found violated and brutalized in abandoned lots in Ciudad Juárez and the surrounding desert, just across the border from El Paso – one of the safest cities in the United States. Here I will analyze the representation of femicidal violence in two border texts: Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s novel 2666(2004) and indigenous Chicana poet ire’ne lara silva’s short story “la huesera, or flesh to bone” (2013; orthographic convention is the author’s).
