Gore Capitalism and Feminism(S)

SEMIOTEXT(E) INTERVENTION SERIES © Sayak Valencia, 2018. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher. Published by Semiotext(e) PO BOX 629, South Pasadena, CA 91031 www.semiotexte.com Translation Editing: Erica Mena Design: Hedi El Kholti ISBN: 978-1-63590-012-5 Distributed by The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, England Contents Warning / Advertencia El Inicio / The Beginning Introduction A Clarification About Gore: Becoming-Snuff 1. The Breakdown of the State as a Political Formation 2. Capitalism as Cultural Construction 3. The New Mafia 4. Necropolitics 5. At the Brink of El Bordo, I Become Blade: Gore Capitalism and Feminism(s) Conclusions El Mero Inicio / The Very Beginning Notes Selected Bibliography To everyone who is engaged in daily rebellion grounded in their own minority becoming. Warning / Advertencia In this book, our aim is not to develop a unitary, hegemonic feminism based on a simplistic critique of violence as foundational to the logics of gore capitalism. We are grounded in a multiplicity of feminisms and we posit the relevance of all of these both as geopolitically- situated systems of knowledge and as responses to specific contexts in which they developed. We believe that these feminisms must not be judged within the “impermeable” structures of white First World feminism. The feminism posited here departs from white First World feminism in its self-reflexiveness and rejects being closely linked to or used “by the imperialist cultural exploitation of feminism” (Chakrovorty, 1999, 303). We do not seek white discourses “nor white men looking to save brown women from brown men” (Chakrovorty, 1999, 303); we do not need First World discourses to explain the realities of the g-local Third World.1 On the contrary, we believe that First World2 discourse should pay attention to what Third World discourses have to say about the evolution of the world of capital and of the world more generally. Reinterpretations of economic roles emerge precisely in the interstices of these peripheral worlds. In these spaces we have seen the creation of new identities and subjects in a broad spectrum ranging from the endriago subjects of gore capitalism to the creation of subjectivities that resist feeding into the static loop of white, heterosexual, masculinist formulas. These new resistant forms do not assume power to be equivalent to violence, but that rather upend that dyad to observe it from novel perspectives, which are able to produce and to imagine new methods for the use of the body, power and desire. In this book, we argue against positioning oneself in a benevolent hierarchy that would stereotype the Third World as a precarious and vulnerable reality exclusively found in the global South; the vulnerability and precarity are real to a large extent, but only insofar as they are a result of the demands and requirements exported from the economic centers and major world powers and distributed by globalization through the media. To conceive of the Third World as a geopolitically immutable space—without any possibility for action, empowerment, or the creation of its own discursive frame—is a clear indication of the disdain implicit in a colonialist position. This book does not posit a naïve, partial reading of our realities that—absolving ourselves of responsibility—might suggest the dystopias of globalization belong exclusively to the Third World; nor does it argue that the only possible contributions to globalization (from the other worlds) might be from the position of victims or executioners (or as distributors of organized crime around the globe.) We do not want abstract discourses disconnected from the body, but instead discourses that are able to re-frame the causes, extent and persistence of violence in the gore-ridden Third World. We want discourses that refuse to appeal to victimization and the nullification of our subjectivities and agency. We want discourses that refuse to rely on reductionist and paternalist thinking that would deny the power of our concrete actions. We do not seek saviors or discourses of salvation, but rather for our own process of empowerment to be recognized as subjects of the same order and with the same validity as Western subjects, yet without being categorized or translated as identical to them or as a monolith. Thus, without neglecting our differences, we seek the creation of our own discourses that nurture a transfeminism that confronts and questions our contemporary situation, a situation that is invariably circumscribed by the logic of gore capitalism. By saying this, we do not mean for this book to reject, or fail to recognize, the theoretical and practical work of diverse forms of feminism and their existence throughout history. On the contrary, the fact that our discourse is careful not to dehistoricize the feminist movement— since in fact, we think it is crucial to know this history and to remember it—means that we recognize the important discursive contribution made by feminist movements to the construction of categories that both explain and locate us in relation to the world. In particular, we recognize the importance of the construction of a discursive corpus that has rendered us visible as a movement founded on network; this body of discourse has established the feminist condition as an epistemological category, and simultaneously preserved it as a condition of certain subjects (not exclusively ciswomen) and as a social movement. For this reason, we join Judith Butler in saying: “It seems more crucial than ever to disengage feminism from its First World presumption and to use the resources of feminist theory and activism to rethink the meaning of the tie, the bond, the alliance, the relation, as they are imagined and lived in the horizon of a counter-imperialist egalitarianism.”3 We seek an explanation of contemporary events that is not mistaken either for an acquittal or a moral indictment of the violence, nor delimited exclusively by moral judgment, in order to rethink the structuring role that violence plays in the evolution of capitalism and in its culmination as gore. We seek, then, a transfeminism that would allow us to think beyond the limits of our current options. We believe that in any given context of oppression, we are forced to create theoretical and practical instruments that help us map out our strategies. We are clear that when there is only one option to choose from, we have to be capable of remaking that very option. To conclude then, if no other option is available, may that choice not be the end of us, but rather through our daily insurrection may it come to re-signify us. El Inicio / The Beginning Esto es Tijuana The fury of clouds that is the Pacific Ocean. A dismembered torso strewn across the highway at rush hour. Cigarettes lit in rapid succession. The neon lights of the red-light district, microscopic universes. Arboreal metastasis. Narcos. Machismo. Silicone Land. Whore-Barbie’s Factory. High caliber weapons laughing, cackling. Esto es Tijuana. Leaving and staying at the same time. Finding another way to say that everything is an eternal return. Irrevocable trajectories and irrevocable women. Violence, tedium and the everyday grind: overdrawn on all accounts. Esto es Tijuana. The word Bienvenidos laughing in my face. The word Bienvenidos meaning every entrance is an exit. Silence stabs. The desert boils. Migrant screams ring out. Esto es Tijuana. Donkey-zebras imitating nostalgia. Shiny new cars. Enraged taxis. The head repeats an atrocious mantra, “open (yourself) up on the inside.” Get into the game. See the Fire. Escape constantly and once and for all bet on winning. Esto es Tijuana. Where the questions where, when and why might not exist, the same as the word “never.” Where half of the half does not compute. Where Interminably is the same as Now. City of over and over again. Where the truth is never known. Where all words—including the word incest—portend multiple histories. Where mi casa es su casa. Where su casa no es mi casa. Where yes, actually, su casa es mi caza: I’m on a hunt and your house is my prey. Esto es Tijuana. La línea never frees itself from the metallic serpent on either side. A frontera-woman looks like death and walks with one hand on her revolver. The syringe-man unsuccessfully attempts to fly along the middle of the metal serpent. The transparent and the true. The piercing. The first and the third world. The border. El bordo. Hell. The other part of the other side. The other side of the other side. The This side of the Other side. The happy world of disenchantment. Esto es Tijuana. The limit. The perimeter. The edge of the world. He/she/they/what is dragged behind. The shore that licks white, middle-class, civilized culture and brings it to its end. The time bomb that detonates us. San Diego’s garage. The divided sea laughing raucously entre las olas. Entre Las Solas. In the waves and in all the women on their own. The grayness. The paradox. Esto es Tijuana. The copyright of the end. Cartel-right. Gore capitalism. Hotels, attractions, nightlife, restaurants, weather and border crossing… A blind search for combinatorics. Two million possibilities. Crunchy, spicy and totally addictive-fabulous blends. Depictions of sodomy, bestiality, alternative sexual practices, racial and ethnic stereotypes. This is Tijuana. Everything that enters or leaves the city comes from two parts. Everything here leaves in two or more parts. You can have whatever you can buy. City of businesses. Virgin girls for sale.

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