Witnessing, Femicide, and a Politics of the Familiar
Abstract
Wright, M. (2012). “Witnessing, Femicide, and a Politics of the Familiar.” In The Global and the Intimate¸ G. Pratt and V. Rosner, eds. New York: Columbia University Press: 267-288.
This chapter explores the cost of establishing familiarity as the criterion for mobilizing political action in relation to discussions within the human rights literature regarding the political advantages and disadvantages of forming social justice movements around the politics of testimonial witnessing. It considers the interconnection between witnessing and the politics of the familiar by focusing on the femicide movement in northern Mexico that, in the mid-1990s, galvanized political action against the murders and kidnappings of several hundred women and girls within a climate of state-sanctioned impunity. The chapter examines how the need to produce familiarity as the bond binding testifying witnesses to their witnessing public is currently limiting the femicide activists' ability to generate public protest over the escalation of violence against women and the curtailment of citizens' rights in relation to the government's drug war.
Abstract
Wright, M. (2012). “Witnessing, Femicide, and a Politics of the Familiar.” In The Global and the Intimate¸ G. Pratt and V. Rosner, eds. New York: Columbia University Press: 267-288.
This chapter explores the cost of establishing familiarity as the criterion for mobilizing political action in relation to discussions within the human rights literature regarding the political advantages and disadvantages of forming social justice movements around the politics of testimonial witnessing. It considers the interconnection between witnessing and the politics of the familiar by focusing on the femicide movement in northern Mexico that, in the mid-1990s, galvanized political action against the murders and kidnappings of several hundred women and girls within a climate of state-sanctioned impunity. The chapter examines how the need to produce familiarity as the bond binding testifying witnesses to their witnessing public is currently limiting the femicide activists' ability to generate public protest over the escalation of violence against women and the curtailment of citizens' rights in relation to the government's drug war.
