UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Conditions of (Im)possibility: Necropolitics, Neoliberalism, and the Cultural Politics of Death in Contemporary Chicana/o Film and Literature A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction for the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Edward A. Avila Committee in charge: Professor Rosaura Sánchez, Chair Professor Yen Le Espiritu Professor David G. Gutiérrez Professor Lisa Lowe Professor Shelley Streeby 2012 Copyright Edward A. Avila, 2012 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Edward A. Avila is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2012 iii DEDICATION Para mis padres, Dolores Ruiz y Vicente Daniel Avila. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………… iii Dedication………………………………………………………………….. iv Table of Contents…………………………………………………………… v Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………. vi Vita………………………………………………………………………….. viii Abstract……………………………………………………………………… ix Introduction………………………………………………………………….. 1 Chapter 1: The Maquila Complex: Necropolitical Landscapes and the Cartographies of Abandonment……………………………………………… 19 Chapter 2: Reification, Disposability, and Resistance……………………….. 70 Chapter 3: What “We” Do Abroad: Liberal Internationalism and Transnational Adoption under Contemporary Neoliberalism at the Borderlands………………………………………………………………. 123 Concluding Remarks…………………………………………………………. 164 Bibliography………………………………………………………………….. 180 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to acknowledge my committee members for all of their support, guidance, and inspiration. Thank you to Yen Le Espiritu for her tireless guidance and support, both academically and otherwise. Your seminar on “War, Race, and Violence” was pivotal towards establishing the theoretical foundation of this dissertation. Discussions with you on such theoretical topics like biopolitics, necropolitics, states of exception, and bare life have had a profound impact on my intellectual development. Thank you to David Gutiérrez for offering numerous hours discussing issues related to the history of the U.S. Southwest, U.S-Mexico immigration history and policy, and the politics of ethnicity in the U.S. I will always cherish our discussions about academia, history, and music. Mil gracias. To Shelley Streeby, I am grateful for all your intellectual guidance in helping me develop a greater understanding of American Studies and more profound respect for archival research. The many hours spent attending your seminars and the early guidance and support you offered me during the formation of this dissertation have left an indelible mark on my current research. Many thanks to Lisa Lowe for making the literary theory sequence of my graduate studies so challenging and enjoyable. I am grateful for our discussions on bio/necropolitics and immigration and literature. I would especially like to thank Rosaura Sánchez for her many years of tireless mentoring and unwavering support. This dissertation would not have been possible without your intellectual guidance, emotional support, and steadfast patience. Thank you for teaching me the importance of responsible scholarship, pedagogy, and activism. I especially want to thank you for encouraging me to stay the course during the most challenging years of my graduate studies. My sincerest gratitude goes to you for vi encouraging me to take risks with my research and for providing me with a model of what it means to be a first-rate scholar and teacher of Chicana/o and Latina/o scholarship. I would like to thank the staff at the Literature Department—Kristen Carnohan, Thom Hill, Nancy Daly, Dawn Blessman, and Ana Minvielle—for their tireless support and for helping me successfully navigate the administrative complexities of graduate school. A very warm thank you to my wonderful family for always supporting me and giving me inspiration for finishing this research project. To my best friend and life-long partner, Delia, for your unwavering support and confidence in me and for holding me up during the entirety of my graduate studies. To my two beautiful and inspiring children—Maya and Eliana—for always reminding me of what is really important in life and why teaching comes with the upmost care and responsibility. vii VITA 2002 Bachelor of Arts, University of California, San Diego 2008 Master of Arts, University of California, San Diego 2012 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Literature Sub Field: Cultural Studies viii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Conditions of (Im)possibility: Necropower and the Cultural Politics of Death in Contemporary Chicana/o Literature and Film by Edward A. Avila Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2012 Professor Rosaura Sánchez, Chair This dissertation argues that the selected literary and filmic texts examined in this study offer critical reconfigurations of the intersecting processes of neoliberal rationalities and the necropolitical order of power along the U.S.-Mexico border. Moreover, the texts examined in this dissertation refocus our attention on critical ix representations of social abandonment, denationalization, and the production of disposable life under contemporary neoliberal capitalism along the border region. Chapter 1, “The Maquila Complex: Necropolitical Landscapes and the Cartographies of Abandonment,” examines the ways in which the film documentaries Maquilapolis: City of Factories (2006) and Señorita Extraviada: Missing Young Women (2001) and the novel Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders (2005) critically articulate and engage with cultural narratives and images of feminicide and anti-female terror. This chapter focuses on the ways in which these seemingly two different film documentaries (re)configure the “conditions of possibility” underwriting various forms of social and political abandonment, exceptionality, and denationalization. Chapter 2, “Reification, Disposability, and Resistance,” continues looking at these three same texts in order to investigate the ways in which these distinct genres of Chicana/o cultural production articulate and reconfigure feminicide in relation to social reification, commodity fetishism, and cultural narratives of disposability. This chapter attempts to look at these two texts primarily through the Marxist concept of reification in order draw attention to the ways in which these texts imaginatively represent violence against women beyond immediate circumstances and towards a complex, contradictory narrative that captures the historicized gender, racial, and class dimensions of violence. Chapter 3, “What ‘We’ Do Abroad: Transnational Adoption and Liberal Internationalism under Contemporary Neoliberalism at the Borderlands,” engages with the cultural representations of the neoliberal (b)order along the Mexico-U.S. borderlands. Linking Foucauldian analyses of neoliberal governmentality with critiques of liberal internationalism and transnational adoption, this chapter investigates the ways in which the novel Desert Blood: The Juárez x Murders and the film Bordertown (2008) configure neoliberal rationalities embedded in the technologies of governing that produce discourses of blame, mismanaged life, and failed motherhood in relation to U.S. narratives of child rescue and humanitarian interventionism. xi Introduction This dissertation offers a critique of Chicana and Chicano cultural representations of feminicide, anti-female terror, and other forms of violence against racialized, poor women along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands from a perspective that considers neoliberal rationalities and necropolitics. Moreover, this dissertation argues that the selected literary and filmic texts examined in this study refocus our attention on critical representations of political abandonment, denationalization, and social deprivation under late-capitalism along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The visual and literary representations examined in this study offer alternative reconfigurations of the intersecting processes of neoliberal socio-political rationalities and the emerging necropolitical order of power along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. While recent studies on neoliberal economic policy provide insightful and instructive frames of analysis toward understanding the complex dialectical relationship between global economic shifts and local social transformations, a growing body of work analyzing the social and political rationalities of neoliberalism offers new ways of thinking about sovereignty, subjectivity, and racialized, gendered relations of power under contemporary global capitalism. In addition to this emerging field of scholarly work on neoliberal rationalities, recent literature on biopolitics, necropolitics, and exceptionality likewise offers critical perspectives from which to examine contemporary forms of discipline and surveillance underwriting various forms of violence against racialized, gendered, segments of the population along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. As Achille Membe reminds us, necropolitics involves “contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death” in which the order of power invested in the fostering of life 1 2 and the care of the bio-political community finds its corollary in the reproduction of relations of enmity, impunity and the right to kill and/or expose to death. Socio-Historical Context From the late nineteenth century to the mid-1920s, the U.S.-Mexico border region emerged as a