Dreamlands, Border Zones, and Spaces of Exception: Comics and Graphic Narratives on the US-Mexico Border

Abstract

This article explores the connections between the spaces of exception along national borders and the bordered architecture of graphic narratives in Charles Bowden and Alice Leora Briggs' Dreamland: The Way Out of Juárez (2010) and Jon Sack's La Lucha: The Story of Lucha Castro and Human Rights in Mexico (2015).

Keywords:

• US-Mexico border
• Juárez
• graphic narrative
• refugee comics

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Valverde, “What You Need.”

2 Wilson, “‘Occupy ICE.’”

3 Schugerman, “Melania Trump.”

4 LoGuirato, “Long, Wild Ride”; and Blake, “Trump Conjures.”

5 Trump, “The United States.”

6 Gessen, “Normalise This!”

7 See Bebout, Whiteness on the Border.

8 See Jones, Violent Borders, 81.

9 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 134.

10 Agamben, “Beyond Human Rights,” 91.

11 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 181.

12 Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera, iv.

13 Terrio, Whose Child Am I?; and Day, “Roots.”

14 Smith, “Human Rights and Comics”; Mickwitz, “Comics as Refugee Stories” and Documentary Comics; Rifkind, “Refugee Comics”; Serrano, Immigrants and Comics; and Davies, “Crossing Borders, Bridging Boundaries” and “Welcome.”

15 See Chak, Undocumented; Evans, Threads; Nabizadeh, “Comics Online”; and Rifkind, “Migrant Detention Comics.”

16 Sacco, Palestine, 144–177.

17 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 181.

18 Salmi, “Reading Footnotes,” 421–422; Sacco, Footnotes in Gaza; and Davies, Urban Comics.

19 Roy, “Urban Informality,” 147.

20 Weizman, Hollow Land, 210.

21 Agamben, “Beyond Human Rights,” 91. See also Jones, Violent Borders, 81.

22 Cantú, The Line Becomes a River; and Guerrero, Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir.

23 See Gwinn, “Mexico’s Official ‘Guide.’”

24 Ibid.

25 See Iliff, “Mexico.”

26 See Céspedes, “‘El Peso Hero.’”

27 See Aldama, Latinx Superheroes.

28 Cuninghame, “Globalisation.”

29 Heiskanen, “‘We Were All Involved.’”

30 Morales, Prieto, and Berjarano. “Transnational Entrepreneurs.”

31 Bowden, Murder City.

32 Sheridan, Sicario.

33 Kermode, “Sicario Review.”

34 Walker, “Sicario.”

35 Isin and Rygel, “Of Other Global Cities,” 185–186.

36 Isin and Rygel, “Of Other Global Cities,” 180.

37 Isin and Rygel, “Of Other Global Cities,” 186.

38 Bowden, Juarez; Bowden, Down by the River; and Bowden, A Shadow in the City.

39 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 18–19, 42, 77–78, 113, 136, 158.

40 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 1.

41 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 1.

42 Nuttall and Mbembe, “Introduction,” 21.

43 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 34–35, 47–48, 84–85.

44 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 201.

45 Blachnicka-Ciacek, “‘Refugees.’” See also Davies, “Hard Infrastructures, Diseased Bodies.”

46 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 10; emphasis added.

47 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 10.

48 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 10.

49 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 95, 99, 117, 137, 150–151, 155.

50 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 10.

51 Bowden and Briggs, Dreamland, 155.

52 Rodríguez, The Femicide Machine.

53 Rodríguez, The Femicide Machine, 7.

54 Sack, La Lucha, x.

55 Sack, La Lucha, x.

56 Sack, La Lucha, x; emphasis added.

57 Sack, La Lucha, 1–6.

58 Sack, La Lucha, 3.

59 Sack, La Lucha, 4.

60 See Davies, “Joe Sacco.”

61 Sacco, Palestine, 146–147.

62 Sack, La Lucha, 23.

63 Sack, La Lucha, 17.

64 Weizman, Forensic Architecture.

65 Sack, La Lucha, 23, 30, 60; emphasis added.

66 Mignolo, Darker Side, 89, 92.

67 Ibid., 92.

68 Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera.