ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the feminicide violence of Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, from a Lacanian perspective. In Ciudad Juárez, the inability of state agencies (police, juridical system, and social workers) to address feminicide’s causes and dynamics has led to remedial actions in the sphere of social activism, such as art exhibits, demonstrations, poems, plays, documentaries, and actions memorializing the often-anonymous victims. While none of these actions invoke a psychoanalytic language in their self-description, they can all be apprehended in terms of a basic psychoanalytic insight that characterized the early work of Jacques Lacan, for whom the Symbolic dimension is the only dimension that cures. Drawing from Lacanian psychoanalysis, the chapter examines the intersection of jouissance and consumer capitalism. The essay argues that this intersection allows us to see the crimes of Juárez not in terms of exceptionality, but rather as a piece in the global assemblage of capitalist accumulation.
