Affect on the Border: Using Emotion to Resist Violence as Seen in "Desert Blood", "La frontera más distante", and "Antígona González"

• In Event: Mujeres y Transgresiones Literarias

Abstract

My project focuses on three literary texts that attempt to process violence and trauma on the border through resistance from the female body and female community. What do personal retellings reveal about gender violence on the border? In order to answer these questions, I look at the following three literary texts: Desert Blood by Alicia Gaspar de Alba (2005), La frontera más distante by Cristina Rivera Garza (2008), and Antígona González by Sarah Uribe (2012). I approach the problematic through literature due to the emotive possibilities and the socio-political possibilities that lie in an affect theory reading of these texts. Here, affect theory refers to a literary analysis and school of thought that prioritizes emotions and interpersonal interactions in the process of analyzing texts. This prioritization gives voice to marginalized voices Literary genre is also politically relevant in that it bridges silenced female voices on the border with various literary audiences. Though literature surrounding the femicides on the border has analyzed the power of female community organizing in the act of resistance (Staudt and Zulma, Gaspar de Alba and Guzmán), the use of affect theory and the prioritization of female emotion has not yet been linked to resistance. I plan to offer a new view of female resistance on the border that comprehends trauma and the emotion that comes of it.

Author

• Gabriela Barrios