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It's a Living: Hit Men in the Mexican Narco War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Rebecca E. Biron
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Abstract

Because hit men in the twenty-first-century Mexican drug war engage in paid labor at the extreme end of dehumanizing economic relations, they expose the shifting notions of work, life, and ethics that support contemporary global capitalism. Hannah Arendt's distinctions between labor, work, and action structure this comparative analysis of two 2010 narratives featuring Mexican hit men: a testimonial text titled El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin and a feature film titled El infierno. These texts explore the subject-producing as well as the destructive effects of murder for hire. Alain Badiou's Ethics illuminates how when professional killing becomes a way of life, it provocatively complicates concepts of the good and the human.

Type
Special Topic: Work Coordinated by Vicky Unruh
Information
PMLA , Volume 127 , Issue 4: Special Topic Work , October 2012 , pp. 820 - 834
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by The Modern Language Association of America

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