Beyond the dead zone

The meanings of loving violence in Highland Mexico

Bibliographic Data

ID2260026
AuthorsC Whittaker (0000-0003-0102-869X, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology Goethe University Frankfurt am Main Germany, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume125
Issue1
Pages112-124
Publication date2023-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/aman.13808
OpenAlexW4313417763
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited55

When violence clearly conveys a message and produces order, it simplifies meaning. Worded differently, it creates a "dead zone" (Graeber 2012). This article argues that intense, passionate love, like intense, physical violence, drastically diminishes meaning and enhances the potential for harm. In recent globalized feminist discourse, it is commonly claimed that love and violence are mutually exclusive, which rests on the assumption that violence is bad and love is good. Yet strictly separating love and violence (e.g., by purging sacrifice from one's understanding of love) intensifies the two and produces dead zones. By contrast, many inhabitants of Milpa Alta, a rural, partially Nahuatl-speaking community south of Mexico City, contend that violence can only be understood in relation to love. They define both concepts in terms of their affective qualities and potential to transform marital and social life. Violence, like love, is neither inherently negative nor positive because sacrifice and punishment are often considered key ingredients for maintaining a productive love among spouses, siblings, and within the wider community. Leaving the boundary between love and violence conceptually and morally porous allows them to remain generative of meaning and retain their productive potential

Aesthetics · Criminology · Epistemology · Harm · Meaning (existential · Sacrifice · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · History · Philosophy · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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