Narcoepics: A Global Aesthetics of Sobriety

Description

Narcoepics Unbound foregrounds the controversial yet mostly untheorized phenomenon of contemporary Latin American 'narcoepics' Dealing with literary works and films whose characteristics are linked to illicit global exchange, informal labor, violence, 'bare life,' drug consumption, and ritualistic patterns of identity, it argues for a new theoretical approach to better understand these 'narratives of intoxication.' Foregrounding the art that has arisen from or seeks to describe drug culture, Herlinghaus' comparative study looks at writers such as Gutiérrez, J. J. Rodríguez, Reverte, films such as City of God, and the narratives surrounding cultural villains/heroes such as Pablo Escobar. Narcoepics shows that that in order to grasp the aesthetic and ethical core of these narratives it is pivotal, first, to develop an 'aesthetics of sobriety.' Cover HalfTitle Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments 1 “Pharmakon” and “Pharmakos” Counterpoint, not other Remembering the “Psychoactive Revolution”: Provincializing the West On the meaning of dissociation, and the logics of denial Unlearning fear, absolving the ghost of the “Pharmakos”: An open genealogy 2 Aesthetics of Sobriety: Ethics at an impasse: Toward abnormal interpretation Humiliating sobriety—a surreptitious path Thinking poverty, relocating aesthetics 3 Heterogeneous Genealogies: Prolegomena First, Mexican encounter with the low-level drug business: Diario de un narcotraficante (Angelo Nacaveva) Demoniac intoxication, construction of guilt, and the predicament of cynicism: Mariposa Blanca (Tito Gutiérrez Vargas) Cinematic writing and the acting brain of a killer: “Lehrstück” about the borders of citizenship (Nostalgia de la sombra, Edu 4 The Political “Baroque” of the Pablo Escobar Story: Pablo Escobar, auge y caída de un narcotraficante (Alonso Salazar) Ominous questions A “Revolution without philosophers” The “Rainmaker” from the Global South: Power and predicament The drama of extradition, and the impossible sovereign Coda 5 Female Castaways: “También las mujeres pueden”1 The impossible healing: Delirio (Laura Restrepo) Toward an ecological aesthetics, postoptimistic: Plasma (Guadalupe Santa Cruz) 6 From “Pharmakon” to Femicide: 2666 (Roberto Bolaño) Thinking from the “Pharmakon,” approaching literature otherwise “Globalized” academics in the wake of cosmopolitanism Placebo intellectuals Benno von Archimboldi, the “Amphibian” “The Part about the Crimes”—Another Almanac of the Dead Bibliography Index