Having recently watched film Sin nombre, which
my paper in my Argentine Cinema class will be based on, I plan to use this time
in the blog to consider some of my ideas for the paper, outlining some of my already
established thought, while wrestling with the ideas of Necro politics and bio
power which we discussed last week. In my paper, I am mainly focusing on the
critical theory within violence and youth. Looking at the etymology of violence in
Spanish (violencia) in relation to rape (violar) both relate to root vis
meaning force (fuerza). Both words carry a similar meaning and can become
compacted, at least in the Spanish language, meaning the something that forced
or a form of unwilling penetration. Susana Rotker along Martin Hopenhayn discusses
violence and fear relating it to how the city or the state, or its form of
controlling and managing space, fails, and falls to violence. Specificaly, on the subject of youth and failure
of state apparatuses Hopenhayn expresses “Si con el capitalismo moderno la
juventud aparece como actor en vías de preparación para entrar en el sistema
productivo esa juventud adquiere hoy, al calor de la crisis del empleo y el
cambio acelerado en modos en vida, un peso especial en la misma medida en que
se hacen menos claras las perspectivas de integración social de los propios
jóvenes” (30). Mainly, Hopenhayn expresses that modern capitalism
requires the youth to be a productive participant within its system, however
with the rise of economic crisis and swift changes in modes of life that is
less clear. Thinking about the failure of capitalism for youth, especially in
Latin and Central America it leads to questions of space which Mary Pat brady
describes as the policing and managing of bodies which must contend with changing
factors (112) Which leads to question of what spaces are left if the state
cannot provide for youth or those who are considered marginal in Latin American
society? Rotker then calls the city a place of Civil war which “makes victims of us all, this undeclared
civil war obliterates spaces of difference and differentiation, making all of
us experience, injustice, insecurity and inequality” (18). What is interesting
about this quote is the aspect of everyone being a victim or inhabiting a space
of violence with the failure of the state to provide a sense of security. She
also discusses how the media commits its own violence by interpellating,
echoing Althusser, us with a sense of fear and creating a state of fear of the
violence that could possibly occur.
Now why
talk so much about space? Let me try to explain El Salvador and its people, at
least in my research, has always been concerned about violence, be it inflicted
by the state or by marginal groups such as the Mara Salvatrucha, a transnational
gang with groups across the same path that many central American immigrants
take to reach the states. Something I noticed is that though there is a
discussion of violent spaces there is no actual definitions of it. For that reason,
I first define a violent space as a space that allows forceful, unwanted,
penetration of its individuals for the sake of its community or maintaining its
violent force. In this case the Mara Salvartrucha acts as a violent space where
the individual become subsumed for the sake of creating an external family or network
that gives the individual subjectivity. In this case, the media and critics
like Rossana Reguillo call those subjects, ghosts, there to procreate and
prolong the violent myth of the gang.
Now
with that in mind Sin Nombre, presents the narrative of four protagonists
Casper (Willy), Saira, Smiley, a child which Casper brought into the Mara
Salvatrucha, and ultimately the train or la bestia which is a center in all their
lives and carries them through their migration. I will not waste my time with summary,
the movie at least to my reading is a negotiation of subversive subjectivity
within violent spaces and the complications that arise from it when these
subjects choose to escape these violent spaces. However, I want to focus on the
train as a subject and object that can highlight aspects of bio power and necro
politics. Mauricio Farah Gebara calls the train for immigrants as “transporte y verdugo
. . . el tren traslado a decena de miles, cerceno cientos de vidas y mutilo otros
tantos cuerpos” (51). Calling the train, la bestia, a vehicle that
transports and judges, amputating and mutilating bodies points out that the
train itself acts as a procreative violent space which creates it myth to the
literal demolishing and destroying of individual subjects. Gebara also states
that the Mara, the workers, and as the film shows even border patrol, takes advantage
of the subjects upon it by stealing, raping, and killing the immigrants who use
it, hence leading to names associated with death and tragedy (51). Now this all seems like stuff related to bio
power but how? That is the major question I am facing. I Believe for the
aspects of Bio power it would be the states disregard for the protection of
immigrants, in the sense that since they are transitory and are inhabiting a
violent space such as la bestia in Sin Nombre, they can be used and taken
advantage of for resources which the state does and allows for others like the
Mara to do so as well. Now with necro politics, it seems to be the case in with
one or two of the protagonists that this comes to play, Casper and Saira. The quote
that comes to mind is this one “As Gilroy notes, this preference for death over
continued servitude is a commentary on the nature of freedom itself (or the
lack thereof). If this lack is the very nature of what it means for the slave
or the colonized to exist, the same lack is also precisely the way in which he
or she takes account of his or her mortality.” (Mbembe 39). Now I am not too sure
how to tackle this, but Casper’s recognition of his eventual death and actual
death from the gang for trying to escape it suggests a sense of freeing himself
from the subjectivity of being solely a ghost that reproduces the myth of
violence for the Mara Salvatrucha. While Saira’s eventual arrival to the states
after having lost her subjectivity as a woman and gone through her own symbolic
destruction and mutilation through the bestia suggests an ability to enter a
new world within the united states, where her subjectivity can now be defined
through her agency. Hopefully this makes some sense in my use of both terms if
not I would appreciate the help to deal with them.
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