Kristin Pitt, “Burning Even Ourselves: Self-Immolation and Feminist Protest in Mariana Enriquez”

The LACUSL Speaker Series presents:

Kristin Pitt, Comparative Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies
“Burning Even Ourselves: Self-Immolation and Feminist Protest in Mariana Enriquez”

In Enriquez’s  “Things We Lost in the Fire,” women respond to an epidemic of feminicide by burning with a second viral wave of burning women, those who self-immolate. Like the women it portrays, the story condemns feminicidal violence and a repressive surveillance state while interrogating the possibilities and limits of protest. What rights do women have over their bodies? From what violence can we demand or decline state protection? In the end, how do we protest erasure and disappearance via fascism, patriarchy, or neoliberal neglect, without losing ourselves in the process?