The Narco Uncanny

IF 0.9 2区社会学 Q2 ANTHROPOLOGY

Public Culture Pub Date : 2020-05-01 DOI:10.1215/08992363-8090101

Shaylih Muehlmann

引用次数: 9

Abstract

This article analyzes the unease created in northern Mexico by the prevalence of “narco-accusations,” which single out individuals suspected of being drug traffickers. The official discourse to justify the Mexican government’s unwillingness to investigate the majority of the 235,000 murders created by the “war on drugs” since 2006 is that the deaths consist of “narcos killing each other off.” However, as a result of the profound interlocking of legal and illegal sectors, most forms of livelihood in the borderlands are potentially implicated in the drug economy. Therefore, the way that deaths are dismissed when labeled as those of “narcos” produces a particular discomfort among people working at the blurry edges of the narco-economy. By analyzing these experiences through the lens of “the uncanny” this article argues that the subject position of the narco is not just derivative of a set of political discourses but a powerful way that people attempt to distance themselves, and their loved ones, from violence.

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毒枭的神秘

这篇文章分析了墨西哥北部普遍存在的“毒品指控”所造成的不安，“毒品指控”指的是那些被怀疑是毒贩的人。墨西哥政府不愿调查自2006年以来“禁毒战争”造成的23.5万起谋杀案中的大多数，官方的说法是，死亡是“毒枭互相残杀”造成的。然而，由于合法和非法部门的紧密联系，边境地区的大多数生计形式都可能牵涉到毒品经济。因此，当死亡被贴上“毒枭”的标签时，这种方式就会让那些在毒品经济模糊边缘工作的人感到特别不舒服。通过对这些经历的“离奇”分析，本文认为，毒枭的主体地位不仅是一系列政治话语的衍生物，而且是人们试图将自己和亲人与暴力拉开距离的一种有力方式。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Public Culture Multiple-

CiteScore

2.10

自引率

6.70%

发文量

期刊介绍： Public Culture is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal of cultural studies, published three times a year—in January, May, and September. It is sponsored by the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU. A four-time CELJ award winner, Public Culture has been publishing field-defining ethnographies and analyses of the cultural politics of globalization for over thirty years. The journal provides a forum for the discussion of the places and occasions where cultural, social, and political differences emerge as public phenomena, manifested in everything from highly particular and localized events in popular or folk culture to global advertising, consumption, and information networks. Artists, activists, and scholars, both well-established and younger, from across the humanities and social sciences and around the world, present some of their most innovative and exciting work in the pages of Public Culture.