HomeViolence, genocide, wars, killings, feminicide, crime, deaths, and aesthetic representations in Latin America (19th-21st c.)

Violence, genocide, wars, killings, feminicide, crime, deaths, and aesthetic representations in Latin America (19th-21st c.)

Violencias, genocidios, guerras, homicidios, feminicidios, crímenes, muertes, representaciones estéticas en América Latina

Violences, génocides, guerres, homicides, féminicides, crimes, meurtres, représentations esthétiques en Amérique latine

Violências, genocídios, guerras, homicídios, feminicídios, crimes, mortes, representações estéticas na América Latina (séculos XIX-XXI)

*  *  *

Published on Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Abstract

We propose that this number be an interdisciplinary approach, one which makes use of history, sociology, anthropology, diplomacy, gender and otherness: aesthetic representations of any kind. The historical period that focuses on the eighth issue of Amerika goes from the nineteenth century to the present day. All the work relating to the past prior to the nineteenth century, linking it to the more recent periods, is welcome as well. This reflection is the product of the exchange and discussion between the University of Antioquia (Colombia) and the Université de Rennes 2 (France).

Announcement

Violence, genocide, wars, killings, feminicide, crime, deaths, and aesthetic representations in Latin America (XIX-XXI)

Argument

The history of mankind is crossed by scenes of violence. All founding myths involve a war, an altercation, a bloody event. To spill blood is equivalent to building an identity that remains indelible, to travel into the past and to project itself onto the future. And if this has a universal level, the same is true at the regional, national, local, family levels. But beyond speculation or tribal space, all this raises a problem that is related to the very principles of humanity: the conflict between good and evil, between justice and injustice, the limits of legality and that of free will, the problem of causality in crime (i.e. the relationship between the offense and the sanction, as seen in writers like Piglia or black novels in Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, and so forth). Death is set in a fluctuating territory, passing through reality and desire, because it is destructive, because it deconstructs; but also because it raises the possibility of a transformation, of a radical change. In that sense, violence and all the other issues we propose to develop produce the effect of shock on the individual and collective identity. They operate as a recasting.

The history of Latin America is part of the dynamics of this process. Even before the ignominy of conquest and colonization and the disappearance of millions of individuals of indigenous peoples, the sign of Latin American history was marked by the founding violence. The processes of indigenous resistance, independence and then the civil wars that shook the Latin American world in their quest to build a state model, successive reigns of tyrants, all these also bear the imprint of such violence. This reality raises issues that relate to the recovery of memory and the rewriting of history, with the function of any form of aesthetic representation when dealing with such issues.

The genocide of indigenous peoples did not stop with independence. On the contrary, the extermination of many ethnic groups, as a result of design, or as a consequence of social abuses, politics, or even the environment; this tragedy has lasted until today. The genocides committed since the nineteenth century and more recently in Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Guatemala, and so forth, prolong this chain that comes from the state and its physical elimination of the opposition, eliminating the possibility of democratic dialogue. Gender violence is part of the same line. The current situation in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) is there to remind us of it.

Given this violence from the corridors of power or the drug, violence brought forth resistance, response, or marginalized sectors of society who were victimized. Indigenous rebellions, unions, political, and anarchist attacks: the emergence of armed groups opposed to the government army. The list needed to enumerate this chronicle of violence seems endless. But we must not forget that peace organizations, the way it was created in Mexico by Javier Sicilia, pose solutions that do not pass through direct confrontation.

How much do we remember from the battlefields, the concentration camps, the territories of the massacres, the pre-Columbian ruins? The historians are increasingly interested in erecting memorials on these issues, because the distortions and omissions have permeated past versions. What should be done with these spaces?

The family environment also echoes the founding violence that gives us the myths: infanticide, patricide, matricide, fratricide. Blood calls to blood as if to create a common origin. Historical drama corresponds to social and family dramas. What image of death do the people make in this context?

This reality has been subject to all kinds of aesthetic procedures. Since the nineteenth century the arts have shaped the image of a society transfixed by the fighting of all kinds. The detective novel, which was born in Spanish in Argentina in 1878 (thirty years before Spain) naturally tackled all these issues, whether they were related to collective violence, or whether they were related to a specific individual. The evolution that became a genre after the contributions of Borges and Bioy Casares, up to the present day, in which novelists emphasize crime far above the modern idea of punishment.

To kill, to die (by natural or unnatural causes), guilty individuals, innocent victims: all these categories added grist to the mills of the artistic imagination since the nineteenth century and continued into other expressions such as music (corridos of the Mexican Revolution, and the narcocorrido to quote a recent example), cinema, theater, and so on. The rise of the novel, the film and the dark television series in Latin America since the 1970s also deserves a critical siege to understand its origins and its dialogue that engages with reality. As in life, in the arts, people also die.

We propose that this number be an interdisciplinary approach, one which makes use of history, sociology, anthropology, diplomacy, gender and otherness: aesthetic representations of any kind. The historical period that focuses on the eighth issue of Amerika goes from the nineteenth century to the present day. All the work relating to the past prior to the nineteenth century, linking it to the more recent periods, is welcome as well.

This reflection is the product of the exchange and discussion between the University of Antioquia (Colombia) and the Université de Rennes 2 (France).

  • Gustavo Forero Quintero (University of Antioquia, Colombia);
  • Claire Sourp and Néstor Ponce (LIRA / ERIMIT 4327, Université Rennes 2)

Submissions

  • Deadline for delivery of works: 2th may 2013

  • 40.000 signs, footnotes and bibliography included

Scientific Committee

http://amerika.revues.org/795


Date(s)

  • Thursday, May 02, 2013

Contact(s)

  • Néstor Ponce
    courriel : nestorponce35 [at] yahoo [dot] fr

Information source

  • Élodie Blestel
    courriel : elodieblestel [at] yahoo [dot] fr

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Violence, genocide, wars, killings, feminicide, crime, deaths, and aesthetic representations in Latin America (19th-21st c.) », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, January 16, 2013, https://doi.org/10.58079/mlz

Archive this announcement

  • Google Agenda
  • iCal
Search OpenEdition Search

You will be redirected to OpenEdition Search