Abstract

DIAZ CRUZ, Rodrigo. Torn up Bodies, Precarious Lives: Violence, Ritualization, Performance. Alteridades [online]. 2014, vol.24, n.48, pp.71-83. ISSN 2448-850X.

This work explores the contemporary ritualization of violence: those actions that strategically focus on the dissolution of the symbolic unity of the body, the sight of its disfigurement -as Adriana Cavarero calls it-, whether through vendettas among drug dealers, pornography or international organ trafficking. Such forms of violence constitute performative acts: they create facts and social realities, they produce the enemy and build a fictitious invincibility of power. When we look at the victims instead of looking at the warrior drawing his sword, we change the way we think about life, about political community, the body, violence, pain and all those ideas of boundary that are birth and death. He who names suffering, who appeals the language of pain, is not referring to an internal state of the subject -as a reference- but claiming recognition from the others. Other's pain is not asking for language's dwelling, but for the body's home; other's pain is not the one we find, but the one that finds us and demands acknowledging our shared vulnerability.

Keywords : body fragmentation; ritualisation of violence; performance; organ trafficking; bio-power.

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