Approximation, Horror, and the Grotesque on the US-Mexico Border
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Published:November 2024
Chapter 3 turns to fragmentation, interrupted similes, and women’s dead bodies to show how they reveal the excessive horror of the US-Mexico border and the ongoing nature of imperial, colonial, and gendered violence. Focusing on Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous novel, 2666 (2004), the chapter shows how the conventions of genre fiction such as horror and the crime novel expose the otherworldliness of a particular historical destruction: the femicides of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. It argues that 2666 instrumentalizes the figure of women’s corpses to produce grotesque excitement in repeated sexual violence. In tension with the redemptive politics of feminist Chicanx border studies, the chapter shows how the novel implements fragmentation to underscore its desire but inability to describe the horror of the corpse or the borderlands that produce it.
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