Herman Herlinghaus, Violence Without Guilt: Ethical Narratives from the Global South

Abstract

Hermann Herlinghaus 's Violence without Guilt offers an original and illuminating approach to contemporary Latin American cultural production in the context of global capital and its impact on local lived experience. The book focuses primarily on narcocorrido ballads by groups such as Los tigres del norte and cinematic, sociological and literary treatments of drug-related violence in 1990s Colombia. The analyses are framed by a theoretical engagement with the notion of "bare life" and its connection to sovereignty and violence, a theme first introduced by Walter Benjamin and more recently taken up in different ways by Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. While much of Herlinghaus's critical focus is informed by Benjamin and Agamben, Violence Without Guilt also introduces a new dimension to the debate: whereas Derrida and Agamben explore the juridical ambiguities of sovereignty, Herlinghaus is interested in how socially-produced affects (fear, anxiety and guilt) illuminate what is at stake with "bare life" in a situation characterized by the crisis of traditional figures of sovereignty. He seeks to show how affect provides a vehicle for projects of exclusion and domination while also testifying to the resilience of those who resist social annihilation and struggle to affirm existence in the absence of any overarching goal or direction that would justify it.