The monstrosity of humiliation: an ethnography among women who’ve been attacked with chemicals

Abstract

Based on ethnography in Colombia among women who had chemical agents tossed in their faces, I argue that this act marks and amputates faces in particular as a way of leaving the victim alive, but sub-humanized, ashamed, and removed from social life. I analyze the initial effects of this act as an undoing, as an act that affects and alters relationships and the very perception that the subject has of themselves; as a humiliation that seeks to be ever renewed, stretching through time as a visible scar; as a tool for making monsters. I also analyze collective and subjective movements of victims refusing to be humiliated.