Falling to my death : vertical rhetorics in neoliberal Mexico / José Angel Maldonado

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maldonado, José Angel, author.

Series:

Rhetoric & conflict

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mexico--Social conditions--21st century.

Mexico.

Violence--Mexico.

Violence.

Suicide.

Genocide.

Women--Crimes against.

Women.

suicides.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

First edition

Place of Publication:

Clemson, SC : Clemson University Press, 2025

Summary:

"In a book that combines memoir and cultural criticism of visual media, public rhetoric, and memory texts, José Ángel Maldonado reflects on the subjectivities he embodies—mestizo, epileptic, and exile—while engaging in a critique of the various popular texts he encounters while travelling through Mexico after living in the United States as an undocumented immigrant. Using the suffix -cide (from the Latin caedere, “to fall,” and “to die”) as a guide for a discussion of modes of dying in contemporary Mexico, he creates a constellation of terms like suicide, magnicide, genocide, and feminicide, as metaphors for falling that define quotidian life in Mexico. This exercise uncloaks what he terms the “rhetorics of verticality” that many deploy when navigating dangerous situations throughout violent, militarized Mexico. Trained as a cultural critic who uses rhetorical theory to deconstruct discourse, he combines a confessional style with an accessible academic voice to demonstrate how everyday texts inform and shape reality in order to anticipate, rather than react to, the inevitability of violence"-- JSTOR

Contents:

Incision : returning to my birthplace

Introduction : Mexico and rhetorics of falling

Incision : here I fall

Suicide and the pleasure of death

Incision : returning to a deathplace

Magnicide and the promise of progress

Incision : encountering the state

Genocide and the exigence of recognition

Incision : encountering the public

Feminicide and the aporia of justice

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed April 6, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version: Maldonado, José Angel Falling to my death

ISBN:

9781638042037

1638042039

9781638042297

1638042292

OCLC:

1564778149