Ghost deixis and the public secret in Tijuana, Mexico

Abstract

Through analysis of one interview, this paper explores ghost deixis—the act of pointing to and, I argue, iconically embodying imaginary or absent objects—in the articulation of a public secret: governmental responsibility for the deaths caused by a 1980 flood in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. My interlocutor struggles against the dominant evidentiary regime of the public sphere, which shapes our interaction both via the interview genre itself and via a map I ask her to engage. When she finally circumvents her indexical difficulties with the map and its authoritative form of knowledge, her narrative of the flood—and full ghost deixis—break forth.