Cultural representations of contemporary Mexican drug culture:
Cultural representations of contemporary Mexican drug culture:

Dark humour and irony in relation to the abject

Summary/Abstract: Ever since Felipe Calderón declared the war on drugs at the beginning of his presidency in 2006, violence has drastically permeated Mexican society. In this paper, I will focus on the different uses of dark humour and irony in the representation of the mutilated and abject body in contemporary Mexican culture, especially in literature. Therefore, I will take into consideration the Mexican tradition of humoristic approaches to death, which might seek a cathartic effect in dealing with violence and trauma. I will also link some grotesque representations of violence to the influence of “nouvelle violence” cinema, related to the films of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodríguez in the 1990s. I will show how irony is introduced as a critical tool that questions our consumption of violence as distant readers or spectators of the scene of crime.

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