The question at the root of this study is why the political formation of state power in Latin
America always seems to be accompanied by violence against women. Two threads run throughout:
an analysis of the relation between image violence and subject formation and the application
of this theory to the political violence exerted upon feminine subjectivity in relation to
state formation in Latin America. I trace the marginalization of women through experimental
dictatorial fiction of the Southern Cone up to the crisis of femicide that has emerged
alongside the so-called narco-state in Mexico in the wake of NAFTA. I argue that Latin American
feminist thought has sought to articulate itself as a post-hegemonic force of interruption from
within the dominant order a project that is problematized in the face of the perverse
seriality of the femicide crimes and the intolerable yet enigmatic power of which they become a
forced representation.
