Violence, Ethics, Representation: Don Winslow and Roberto Bolaño in Ciudad Juárez

Abstract

hat is at stake when writers of fiction try to represent violence? What ethical and aesthetic problems are enacted when the frame of fiction is placed around the "real," and how far can these problems ever be adequately addressed? This essay looks at how ROBERTO BOLAÑO and DON WINSLOW, in their respective novels 2666 (2004) and The Cartel (2015), represent the real world violence afflicting the U.S.-Mexico border city of El Paso/Ciudad Juárez from 1993 to the present. There are significant overlaps between these novels in terms of their narrative scope, their genre-bending ambitions, and their desire to tie this "new" violence to the accumulative tendencies of contemporary capitalism. However, these novels'