Copyright by Lydia Cristina Huerta Moreno 2012
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Copyright by Lydia Cristina Huerta Moreno 2012 The Dissertation Committee for Lydia Cristina Huerta Moreno Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Affecting Violence: Narratives of Los Feminicidios and their Ethical and Political Reception Committee: Hector Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Supervisor Jill Robbins, Co-Supervisor Jossianna Arroyo Hannah Chapelle-Wojciehowski Patricia Ravelo Blancas María Pía Lara Affecting Violence: Narratives of Los Feminicidios and their Ethical and Political Reception by Lydia Cristina Huerta Moreno, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2012 Dedication For Dolora and for all those who have suffered violence as a result of war, gender, race, or social class. Acknowledgements For me, as for many others, life is an adventure. This dissertation has been my biggest and perhaps most rewarding adventure of all. I was fortunate enough to meet, interact, and mature because of the people I met along the way. First and foremost I would like to thank Dr. Hector Domínguez Ruvalcaba and Dr. Jill Robbins for their dedicated efforts in shaping this dissertation. Dr. Domínguez, I will always be grateful for your ability to confront my thoughts in a manner that created strong debates always challenging my own perspectives, as well as introducing me to Dr. Ravelo Blancas, without whose perspective this work could have not been possible. Dr. Robbins I will forverever be grateful for our extended conversations and for having opened the possibilities of my interpretations with the work of Dr. Pía Lara. I am also forever thankful for having taught me the fine art of commas and semicolons, which played a central role in your careful and assertive editing. Dr. Arroyo, thank you for all your generous support and encouragement for my experiemtations in new readings. Dr. Wojiciehowski, without your careful input and interdisciplinary suggestions to the scientific world this work would not have been possible. Dra. Ravelo, I am very grateful for all the conversations about Mexican feminisms, the situation in Ciudad Juarez and for all your encouragement and support. Dr. Pía Lara, I want to thank you for your willingness to work with me; your work inspired the philosophical undertones of this dissertation. Additionally I would like to recognize the support of my family and friends, as without them I would have never been able to conclude this adventure. Rodrigo, meu complice na vida e no amor, obrigada pela paciencia, o amor incondicional, e tudas v aquelas noites de contos fabulosos. Papá—sin tus enseñanzas, tu paciencia, tu feminismo y la educación que me diste sobre la justicia, la lucha, y el perdón esto no hubiera sido possible. Mum, because without all of your economic and moral support I would never been able to take off. Kurie—gracias por escucharme en aquellos momentos donde el camino estaba más obscuro. Yvan, siempre has sido una insipiración porque me recordabas del abismo entre la teoría y la práctica, y por tu apoyo incondiconal, and Jessi, without your love, revisons and unconditional support I would have gone mad a long time ago. To Agustín Huerta Wilde, Bernardo Amezcua, Dr. Lourdes Huerta Wilde, and Miriam Casavantes for their support. I am also grateful for the friendships that have accompanied or joined my side during this journey. Laura Rodríguez, Semra Malik, Christina McCoy, Becky Thompson, Ingrid Robyn, Aisha Saati, Zachary Montz, Diego Sanchez, Diana Manzanedo, Malena Leon, Paty y Jorge, Carlos Amador, Anothony Berryhill, Paula Park, Heidi Gootnick, Marco Paulo Alvez, Azahara Palomeque Recio, Andrea Nieto, Dr. Roger Bonnecaze, Alicia Issac-Cura, Daniel Bonnecaze, Cristina Hellmund, Dr. Jose Augusto Leandro and Sandro Cogneligan, Jessica Bialostosky and Marc Grynberg. I am grateful for the amazing conversations, the great dinners, the lodging while I collected parts of my research, and for showing me the light in the darkest parts of my journey. vi Affecting Violence: Narratives of Los Feminicidios and their Ethical and Political Reception Lydia Cristina Huerta Moreno, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2012 Supervisors: Hector Domínguez-Ruvalcaba and Jill Robbins Abstract: In Mexico there is an increasing lack of engagement of the Mexican government and its citizens towards resolving violence. In the 20th century alone events such as the Revolution of 1910, La Guerra Cristera, La Guerra Sucia, and most recently Los Feminicidios and Calderón’s War on Drugs are representative of an ethos of violence withstood and inflicted by Mexicans towards women, men, youth, and marginalized groups. This dissertation examines Los Feminicidios in Ciudad Juarez and the cultural production surrounding them: chronicles, novels, documentaries and films. In it I draw on Aristotle’s influential Nicomachean Ethics, Victoria Camps’ El gobierno de las emociones (2011), María Pía Lara’s Narrating Evil (2007), Vittorio Gallese’s and other scientists’ research on neuroscience empathy and neurohumanism, and socio-political essays in order to theorize how a pathos-infused understanding of ethos might engage a reading and viewing public in what has become a discourse about violence determined by a sense of fatalism. Specifically, I argue that literary and film narratives and their interpretations play a significant role in people’s emotional engagement and subsequent cognitive processes. I stress the importance of creating an approach that considers both vii pathos and logos as a way of understanding the ethos of violence. By doing so, we can break through the theoretical impasse, which thus far has resulted in exceptionalisms and has been limited to categorizing as evil the social and political mechanisms that cause this violence. viii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 1 Femicide/Feminicidos: Standard Theoretical Approaches ............................. 5 A Pathos Infused Approach To Los Feminicidios ....................................... 13 Ethics and the Importance of Narratives ...................................................... 16 Neuroscience and Empathy .......................................................................... 22 Narratives, Empathy, and Social Change ..................................................... 27 Empathy in Literature ................................................................................... 28 Empathy in Film ........................................................................................... 30 A Map to a Pathos-Infused Approach to Los Feminicidios ......................... 41 Chapter 1: Non-Fictional Literary Calls to Action ............................................... 44 Activist Literature: A Stifled Call for Action ............................................... 44 Essays, Testimonies, and Chronicles ............................................................ 54 Snuff Narratives and Non-Fiction ................................................................ 62 Shaping Our Understanding of Evil ............................................................. 72 Chapter 2: 2666 a Moral Laboratory for Reflective Judgment ............................ 76 Inception and Reception ............................................................................... 78 Role-Taking: An Empathic Response to Narratives .................................... 84 An Instrument for Ethical Reflection ........................................................... 89 A Summary of Parts ............................................................................ 90 Role-taking in Practice ........................................................................ 93 Example 1: Excerpt from “The Part About the Critics” ............. 94 Example 2: Excerpt from “The Part of Amalfitano” .................. 97 Example 3: Excerpt from “The Part about Fate” ........................ 99 Example 4: Excerpt from “The Part about the Crimes” ........... 101 Example 5: Excerpt from “The Part about Archimboldi” ........ 103 Reflective Judgments .................................................................................. 104 ix Chapter 3: Visualizing Woman Killings on the Big Screen ................................ 106 Creating Backyard ...................................................................................... 107 Backyard Empathizing ............................................................................... 111 Opening Sequence: The fence and the factors .................................. 112 Murder Sequence: From Juana’s Rape to Death ............................... 122 Digital Commentary Posts as a Form of Reflective Judgments ................. 131 Chapter 4: Documentaries and Altruistic Actions to Change the World ............ 135 A Worldwide Audience .............................................................................. 136 Political Documentary Affect ..................................................................... 138 Guided Altruistic Action ............................................................................ 152 CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................................... 159 Appendix ............................................................................................................