Carceral Kinship: Future Families of the Late Leviathan

Abstract

This essay examines the monstrous first as a figure haunting Western legal history, stripped of rights and often merging with the animal, and second, as a divergent sociality borne of emergencies, crises, and faultlines of late liberal governmentality. In particular I ask how the figure of the pathological and violent gang member structures debates about the US‐Mexico border crosser, and the limits of humanity before the law. The essay moves from a genealogy of the gang member in Honduras, to the refugee asylum seeker of 2018, to ask what forms of difference‐making, in the form of new monstrosities, might inform new notions of kinship and solidarity amid anthropocenic futures.

The Generation of the Coup: Honduran Youth at Risk and of Risk

“…The marero rejects expectations with a new, irreverent, cynical, and arrogant discourse. The figure of the marero constructed an antagonistic social imaginary against official power and the neoliberal capitalist discourse of the government (Carter 2019b; Pine 2008). Yet maras also replicate many hegemonic ideas: the use of violence to solve disputes, men as both protectors and disciplinarians, a taxation system which serves to both fund the activities of those in power and serve as a proxy measure of loyalty.…”