Date of Graduation

12-2017

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies

Advisor/Mentor

Restrepo, Luis F.

Committee Member

Villalobos, Sergio

Second Committee Member

Booker, M. Keith

Keywords

Contemporary Violence; Globalization; Literature and Film; Literature and Violence; Neoliberalism; Neoliberal Violence

Abstract

In the last decades, with an increased rhythm and greater intensity, the so-called neoliberal violence has come to play a relevant role within the history of world societies. The Latin American institutional, political, social, and economic changes of the 1970’s and 1980’s, especially those produced under dictatorships, contributed to create the conditions for the implementation of the processes of economic liberalization and global market as part of the concept of institutional modernization and cultural globalization that gave rise to the neoliberal mentality. In this context, neoliberalism becomes hegemonic as a mode of discourse and is incorporated into the way individuals interpret, live in, and understand the world. Its incorporation into world societies has motivated changes in the division of labor, changes in social relations, the dismantling of welfare necessities, increase in technology, and differentiation in the ways of life and thought, but more importantly, it has motivated the rise of new forms of contemporary violence which develop and nurture themselves from the political and economic opportunities that neoliberalism creates. This work will present a theoretical approach of the theme of neoliberalism and will concentrate its study on literary and cinematic representations of the theme of narcotraffic and the relation migration-feminicides as new forms of contemporary neoliberal violence in the context of Latin America with special interest in Mexico and Colombia. In this sense, the work of authors such as David Harvey, Hermann Herlinghaus, Ileana Rodriguez, Jean Franco, and others; will contribute to the analysis of the theme of violence in this study in ways that will support how violence has been used historically as a tool to perpetuate relationships of domination. Also, the literary and cinematic representations of the theme of neoliberal violence will be analyzed in the works of Fernando Vallejo (La virgen de los sicarios), Jorge Franco (Rosario Tijeras), Roberto Bolaño (2666), Orfa Alarcón (Perra Brava), Juan Pablo Villalobos (Fiesta en la madriguera), and Yuri Herrera (Los trabajos del reino) are analyzed in this work.

Key words: violence, neoliberalism, globalization, colonialism, feminicides, narcotraffic, migration, capital accumulation, marginalization, disposable workers, postmodernism, and competitiveness.

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