ABSTRACT
Pheobe Gloeckner’s 2008 graphic novella La Tristeza focuses on the “femicides” that have been occurring in Juárez, Mexico for the past few decades. Instead of documenting this crisis using the comics format she is so well known for, Gloeckner represents the female victims in the form of photographed, hand-made dolls. This chapter explores the strategies and visual methods Gloeckner uses in representing the extreme end-point of sexual violence, how the doll figures and other (gendered) images signify in the larger context of representing violation, and how these various strategies come together to enact on the plane of the page itself a space for readers to question the ethics of looking at other peoples’ pain.
