Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


osu1338381722.pdf (1.42 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

"Symbolic and Global Violence in Contemporary Mexican and Spanish Crime Fiction"

Diego Rivera Hernandez, Raul
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338381722

Abstract Details

2012, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Spanish and Portuguese.
In my research, I conduct a critical reading of two types of violence in Mexican and Spanish crime fiction: a symbolic and a global violence. The former originates in the cultural apparatus of the state, the editorial industry, private foundations, and the academic world. The latter emerges in places where massive migration of laborers occurs, such as the border between Mexico and the United States, and Spain, a country that has had an influx of immigrant since the 1990s. I claim that detective fiction acts as a narrative that persecutes crime, corruption, and abuses of power in the cultural arena. I analyze the symbolic violence in the cultural administration in "El miedo a los animales" (Enrique Serna 1995), "El premio" (Manuel Vazquez Montalban 1995) and "Muerte entre poetas" (Angela Vallvey 2008), through the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. I explain the functioning of mechanisms found within institutional recognition: scholarships, awards, publications, and prizes. The cultural elites enjoy symbolic power that enables them to consecrate the prestige of artists and intellectuals, but also grants them the opportunity to exclude, marginalize, and silence others. The instances of global violence I discuss are the feminicides in Ciudad Juarez, and xenophobia and racial violence in Spain. In the first example my argument is that detective narrative is a genre that crosses the oceans and emphasizes the Mexican state administration’s inability to solve its current issues. In the second case, I propose that crime fiction centers on immigration in order to reflect ‘border anxiety’, and serves as a strategy for preserving national identity. On the topic of feminicides, I select three novels by non-Mexican authors in order to discuss national, frontier, and global perspectives to state crime. "Ciudad final" (2007) by Basque Josebe Martinez, written under the pseudonym Kama Gutier, "Desert Blood" (2005) by the American Alicia Gaspar de Alba (2005), and "2666" (2004) by the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, are examined through the work of Ileana Rodriguez and Laura Rita Segato. They both assert that the bodies of brutally murdered women are written texts with a message, which circulate through the criminal underworld. Regarding the phenomenon of immigration, "La Reina del Sur" (Arturo Perez Reverte 2002) "Galvez en la frontera" (Jorge Martinez Reverte 2001) and "El color de los muertos" (Jose Javier Abasolo 2005) portray a territorial and a cultural border anxiety. The former is characterized by the rejection and dismissal of the economic immigrants’ countries of origin; the latter depicts dissimilarities and incompatibility of lifestyles between locals and the ‘others’. Thus, the Spanish detective novel presents the superiority of the national through Manichean metaphors, manifestations of neoracism, and Eurocentric views of the otherness.
Ileana Rodriguez (Advisor)
Ignacio Corona (Other)
Eugenia Romero (Other)
Jesus Lara (Other)
218 p.
Literature
Mexican crime fiction; Spanish crime fiction; symbolic violence; academic mafias; global violence; femicide; immigration to Spain; border anxiety

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Diego Rivera Hernandez, R. (2012). "Symbolic and Global Violence in Contemporary Mexican and Spanish Crime Fiction" [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338381722

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Diego Rivera Hernandez, Raul. "Symbolic and Global Violence in Contemporary Mexican and Spanish Crime Fiction". 2012. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338381722.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Diego Rivera Hernandez, Raul. ""Symbolic and Global Violence in Contemporary Mexican and Spanish Crime Fiction"." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338381722

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1338381722
1,518
© 2012, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.