Analyzing the Mexican case of collectives of women currently looking for their disappeared relatives due to an escalation of violence related to the so-called War against Drugs that former president Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) started, this essay develops a new conception of politics grounded not only on rational thought but also on affect. These collectives put forward a materialistic, feminist, and performative mode of politics. Publicly lamenting their losses and literally digging bodies out of Mexican land, these women perform and recover the citizenship that the Mexican state has de facto disavowed of them. I propose conceptualizing them as “bad victims” since their taking action does not take away their pain; rather, the public exposure of their lament actually turns them into political agents.
Bio:
Rosaura Martínez Ruiz is Full Professor of Philosophy at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a member of the National System of Researchers, level III. She was coordinator of the research projects “Philosophers after Freud” and “Philosophy and Psychoanalysis as Critical Borders of the Political.” She is the author of Freud y Derrida: escritura y psique (2013) and Eros: Más allá de la pulsión de muerte (2017). This last book has been translated into English and published by Fordham University Press (2021). She has coordinated several collective books and published articles on the intersection between psychoanalysis and philosophy and on the field of the psychopolitical. In 2017 she was awarded the Research Prize in Humanities by the Mexican Academy of Sciences; in 2019 she was a Fulbright Scholar; in 2021 she received the Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz UNAM recognition; and during the Fall 2023 she was the Tinker Visiting Professor at Columbia University. She is part of the advisory board of the “International Consortium of Critical Theory Programs” coordinated by Judith Butler.
Political Concepts: A Critical Lexicon began as a multidisciplinary, web-based journal in which an assemblage of contributions focused on a single concept with the express intention of re-situating its meaning in the field of political discourse. By reflecting on what has remained unquestioned or unthought in that concept, this all-around collection of essays seeks to open pathways for another future—one that is not already determined and ill-fated.
From this forum for engaged scholarship, a succession of academic conferences have sprung as a space for conversation and constructive debate, including its Graduate Conference at the New School for Social Research organized by students of the Departments of Anthropology, Economics, Philosophy, Politics, and Sociology. Political Concepts invites graduate students from all fields of study to participate in our upcoming conference in Spring 2024. Held at NSSR over March 29-30, the conference will serve as a workshop of ideas on the multiplicity of powers, structures, problems, and orientations that shape our collective life.
Because Political Concepts does not predetermine what does or does not count as political, the conference welcomes essays that fashion new political concepts or demonstrate how concepts deserve to be taken as politically significant. Papers should be dedicated to a single political concept, like an encyclopedia entry, but the analysis of the concept does not have to abide to traditional approaches. Some of the concepts contended with in previous years’ vibrant conferences included abolition, survival, catastrophe, resentment, money, dependence, trans, imaginary, and solidarity. Other examples can be found in the published papers on the Political Concepts website.
Abstracts should be no longer than 750 words in a pdf format, and prepared for blind review, so please ensure that your abstract is free from any identifying personal details. Please title your abstract with your concept. Abstracts must be submitted through this google form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfyVC0H0LSpcyJ3QpcbAvZjEkcUYoS-TCp0kPc6ObTg4YFSiQ/viewform) by December 7, 2023 EST. Any inquiries can be sent to politicalconceptsNSSR@gmail.com.
Applicants must be advanced graduate students and their concept must be a central part of a longer term project in order to be accepted. Results will be informed in January.