(2018) Narcoculture? Narco trafficking as a semiosphere of anticulture (original) (raw)
Related papers
Narcoculture? Narco-trafficking as a Semiosphere of Anticulture, 2018
DOI: 10.1515/sem-2016-0151 In this paper we approach a current issue related to the so-called concept of narcoculture. Several works in Latin America and the United States have addressed this matter and not only accept the term narcoculture, but also stress both the symbolic and aesthetic perspectives. In order to rethink the concept of narcoculture from different angles, we appeal to Juri Lotman and Boris Uspensky’s proposals regarding the concepts of culture, non-culture and anticulture. Rather than accept and reproduce the concept of narcoculture, by means of linking Lotman and Uspensky’s approach with the standpoint of complexity thinking and transdisciplinarity, we propose the treatment of drug trafficking as a semiosphere of anticulture. We emphasize the contradictions inherent in the actors dwelling in this semiosphere, incorporating reflections from chaotic and barbaric processes designed to wreak havoc in Mexican society. The common acceptance of the concept of narcoculture does not acknowledge the current devastation and bloodshed produced by narco-traffickers and others in cahoots with the Mexican government and its militarized drug war strategy. During the last few decades, drug trafficking has inspired organized crime and their actors, spurring the representation of everyday societal features such as music, fashion, architecture, or traffickers’ social status.
(2014) Narco-traffic in the light of cultural semiotics and complexity theory
In this paper we approach a complex issue related to the so-called concept of narcoculture. Several works have addressed this matter and not only accept this cultural production, but also stress both their symbolic and aesthetic perspectives. Yet, all these works still neglect an ethical viewpoint. In order to rethink the concept of narcoculture from different angles, we appeal to Juri Lotman's proposals. On the one hand, we point the contradictions within the semiosphere. On the other hand, by means of linking Lotman's approach with the standpoint of complexity thinking and transdisciplinarity, we will discuss such topics as narcotraffic and narcoculture from a deeper analysis that incorporates reflections from the standpoint of chaotic and unpredictable processes. During the last decades narcoculture has inspired several everyday life features such as music, fashion, architecture, or traffickers' social status –embodied as heroes and cherished as saviors in the legendary narcocorridos. The concept narcoculture has gone far beyond, developing the so-called narco-literature, and even worshipping the narco-saint Jesús Malverde. In this paper we address the following questions: How can we approach these cultural issues from the point of view of complexity theory and transdiciplinarity? Is it possible to envisage them as cultural units? Are they cultural deviances in the sense of cultural barbarism (Lotman, 2011)?
The Narcotraffic in the Light of Cultural Semiotics and Complexity Theory, 2014
ISBN: 978-954-535-943-9 / ISSN 2414-6862 Julieta Haidar & Eduardo Chávez Herrera In this paper we approach a complex issue related to the so-called concept of narcoculture. Several works have addressed this matter and not only accept this cultural production, but also stress both their symbolic and aesthetic perspectives. Yet, all these works still neglect an ethical viewpoint. In order to rethink the concept of narcoculture from different angles, we appeal to Juri Lotman's proposals. On the one hand, we point the contradictions within the semiosphere. On the other hand, by means of linking Lotman's approach with the standpoint of complexity thinking and transdisciplinarity, we will discuss such topics as narcotraffic and narcoculture from a deeper analysis that incorporates reflections from the standpoint of chaotic and unpredictable processes. During the last decades narcoculture has inspired several everyday life features such as music, fashion, architecture, or traffickers' social status –embodied as heroes and cherished as saviors in the legendary narcocorridos. The concept narcoculture has gone far beyond, developing the so-called narco-literature, and even worshipping the narco-saint Jesús Malverde. In this paper we address the following questions: How can we approach these cultural issues from the point of view of complexity theory and transdiciplinarity? Is it possible to envisage them as cultural units? Are they cultural deviances in the sense of cultural barbarism (Lotman, 2011)?
The War on Drugs, launched by the United States in the 1970s and subsequently waged with the collaboration of governments throughout Latin America, has helped to consolidate the transnational drug trade, which according to official sources now earns more than US$400 billion in annual profits worldwide. By the 1980s, when the television series Miami Vice first brought a glossy and glamorized version of the drug war to the global public, Latin American drug traffickers had developed complex distribution routes and smuggling methods to satisfy the great demand for cocaine, marijuana, and heroin in the United States and Europe. Since the capitalist crisis of the 1980s and the implementation of neoliberal policies in the past two decades, drug trafficking has become the most important illegal global industry and a source of political corruption, judicial impunity, and violence throughout Latin America. Without denying the contested nature of the world of the narco and its impact, here we theorize narcoscapes as both real and fictional, true and "imagined." We attempt to go beyond the drug war to understand how real communities and individuals are rethinking the effect of drugs and the violence generated by the "war" in the context of globalization.
The Politics of Life and Death: Mexican Narconarratives at the Edge of the Twenty-first Century
2020
This dissertation examines the link between sovereignty, law, community and (il)legal violence in 20th/21st century Mexican narratives associated with drug trafficking themes. The field of biopolitics provides ample pathways to explore the intersection of these concepts as they are portrayed in contemporary Mexican literature, music and film. Combining the theories of Michel Foucault, Roberto Esposito, Giorgio Agamben and Carl Schmitt, among others, this project analyzes the law and the sovereign, as well as the community and the narco within the spaces they inhabit as they enter in (violent) dialogue with each other. Furthermore, such relationship is viewed panoramically in three stages. First, I analyze the rise of a mythologized narco-sovereign and the creation of what could be conceptualized as Narcobiopolitcs, which materializes the moment the drug trafficker emerges into the Mexican collective imaginary and fights for a space for its own "community." Second, narco-co...
Critique of everyday narco-capitalism
Third World Quarterly, 2022
Capitalism is not only an economic mode of production; it is also a form of life. This also applies to a historical type of capitalism, which is the capitalism founded on (illicit) drugs-in other words: narco-capitalism. The article discusses how capitalism alters life at the nexus of drug production, trade and consumption through a study of drug heartlands in Colombia, Afghanistan and Myanmar. What forms of life emerge under narco-capitalism? And how do people seek change and express agency in the exploitative conditions governed by narco-capital? To do so, the article proceeds through the following sections: first, it elucidates its definition of the 'everyday' as a conceptual and methodological scheme to understand capitalist forms of life. Then it uses material collected from people's everyday encounter with narco-capitalism in Afghanistan, Myanmar and Colombia to discuss mystification, predation and alienation. The article explores how capitalism produces forms of life that make use of drugs and narco-capital to dispossess and alienate collectivities. Finally, the article argues that to move beyond this alienating condition, drug wars and/or development are not a solution, because drugs are not the problem. Instead, it is people's organisation and world-building in dialectical mode to capitalist forms of life that can transform everyday life beyond predation and alienation.
The War on Drugs in Mexico: Narco Culture and Conflict
The War on Drugs in Mexico: Narco Culture and Conflict, 2022
This paper elaborated in my master's program of Peace and Conflict Studies, in the Univeristy of Oslo, helps the international community to understand the development of drug cartel's evolution and structure in Mexico since the beginning of the XX Century. This research helps us to understand how the cartels operate and their connection with the mexican political life.
Narcocorridos and the Nostalgia of Violence: Postmodern Resistance en la Frontera
A musical derivation of the traditional polka-and waltz-like corrido, the narcocorrido (literally, drug ballad) is often dismissed and simplistically read as an archaic and ultraviolent form of the classic Mexican ballad, updated only in its replacement of revolutionary heroes with the glorified exploits of contemporary crossborder drug traffickers. While increased attention has been given to the genre from scholarly and popular authors in the past decade (see Edberg, El Narcotraficante; Herlinghaus; Quinones; Simonett; Tatum; Wald), the narcocorrido continues to bring about contested meaning and interpretation, often echoing the ongoing battle for control and ownership of the physical and psychic space of la frontera, a space where "complexity, negotiation, and hybridity are everyday constants" (Madrid 4). The narcocorrido, with its embodiment of the complex cultural negotiations of the borderlands, offers a cultural text that can enable western studies to build on work of other scholars seeking to expand notions of what the "West," or "frontier," is or can be (see Campbell, Comer, Kollin) and to place the often neglected or overlooked contribution of norteño culture and music within ongoing discussions of postcolonial life in the borderlands. 1 In this essay, I will argue that the narcocorrido specifically enacts a postmodern fantasy that serves to counter hegemonic US discourse that has historically neglected the norteño point of view or situates the former inhabitants of the New Spanish frontier within an east-west paradigm that fails to acknowledge the complex legacy of conquest that preceded the "founding" of the American West. 2
Criminals and Enemies? The Drug Trafficker in Mexico's Political Imaginary
Mexican Law Review, 2016
This article compares the official and the widely held discourses about drug traffickers in Mexico's current War against Drugs. The federal government has obliquely distorted the distinction between a criminal and an enemy, dehumanizing drug traffickers and, thus, opening up a spectrum of tolerance for the repressive actions carried out by the authorities against drug traffickers. Inadvertently, however, official discourse has also politicized and empowered drug traffickers, casting them as an enemy. In contrast, popular discourse surrounding drugs and drug trafficking seems to have resisted these disintegrating categories. Using narcocorridos-a popular musical subgenre-, I conclude that criminal and enemy categories when referring to drug traffickers do not merge in the popular imaginary. Nevertheless, younger musicians seem to pick up on the politization of the drug trafficker as the enemy, the risks and implications of which are indicated in this article.