Something Very Extraordinary: Incandescence and the Wounding Photograph

Chapter 6 moves from a discussion of photography about crossings of the Mexico-US border to a reading of photography through the lens of the Nicaraguan Revolution. The chapter analyzes the photograph Cuesta del Plomo, one of photographer Susan Meiselas's most famous photographs, taken at a time of turmoil in Nicaragua, by way of Barthes's notions of fulguration and Julia Kristeva's understanding of abjection, the corpse, and corporeal excess. The chapter foregrounds the ability of the photograph's carnality to take the self to a point of undoing, of self-loss, what is introduced as photographic incandescence. The chapter takes up how, through a return to Anzaldúa's carnal aesthetics and specifically her discussion of the dismembered moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui, the possibility of re-membering arises. The chapter concludes with a letter to Roland Barthes, commenting on his reactions to photographs of the armed conflict in Estelí, Nicaragua: “Nothing very extraordinary,” Barthes says.