Embodied performance in violent places: transiting in and through the home, the streets, and institutions in Mexico

News

27 enero 2022

Julie-Anne Boudreau with two colleagues release a new article in Emotion, Space and Society new issue.

«Young marginalized people who live in violent contexts have intense and non-linear spatial experiences. This paper explores their gendered responses to violence in terms of body performance and spatial movements between their houses, in the streets and within various institutions. We consider these social subjects to be both ‘body-subjects’ and ‘feeling-subjects’, as their corporeality articulates urban space and becomes an extension of locations bound by emotion. Through mapping workshops, drawings, and interviews with young residents of a rehabilitation center located on the edge of Mexico City, we explore how institutions dedicated to marginalized youths materialize in their life trajectories. In other words, this paper analyzes institutions from the perspective of youth experience and feelings rather than institutional programs or from the point of view of staff members. We locate these institutions in the various spaces inhabited by the youth. The paper concludes with a reflection on the ambiguities of “care” as a response to violence.»

To read the full article, please click here (available publicly until March 15th 2022 only).