Description
Book SynopsisReclaiming the notion of literature as an institution essential for reflecting on the violence of culture, history, and politics, Violence and Naming exposes the tension between the irreducible, constitutive violence of language and the reducible, empirical violation of others. Focusing on an array of literary artifacts, from works by journalists such as Elena Poniatowska and Sergio González Rodríguez to the Zapatista communiqués to Roberto Bolaño''s The Savage Detectives and 2666, this examination demonstrates that Mexican culture takes place as a struggle over naming—with severe implications for the rights and lives of women and indigenous persons.
Through rereadings of the Conquest of Mexico, the northern Mexican feminicide, the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, the disappearance of the forty-three students at Iguala in 2014, and the 1999 abortion-rights scandal centering on “Paulina,” which revealed the
Trade Review
Ambitious, complex, and subtly argued…The commentary is rich, broad reaching, and significant. * CHOICE *
Violence and Naming offers multiple paths to account for and rethink the intersections of literature, philosophy, and politics…The book is an insightful and provocative cluster of explorations and analyses that summons readers to evaluate, participate, and produce their own critical perspectives. * MLN *
[Violence and Naming is] a truly valuable monograph. Johnson's application of fiction as an active philosophy is impressive and illuminating. The book's bringing into dialogue of lives shattered by violence with longstanding cultural narratives and contemporary, global socio-politics is daring and necessary. * Bulletin of Spanish Studies *
Violence and Naming offers a panoramic account of language and violence in Mexico...Violence and Naming is remarkable for its theoretical depth and clarity of exposition. It is a challenging read, but will prove highly rewarding to readers who are familiar with Mexican culture, with Derrida and deconstruction, or with both. * Chasqui *
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Accounting for the Name
- Chapter 1. Dar(se) cuenta: The Logic of the Secret
- Chapter 2. Murder and Symbol: Feminicide’s Remains
- Chapter 3. As If . . . Literature before the World
- Chapter 4. Killing Time: Jet Lag, or the Anachronism of Life
- Chapter 5. Suspending Sur/render: Accounting for the Other
- Postscript: Fear of Democracy
- Notes
- References
- Index
