Landscapes of desapropiación

This article compares two documentary films characterised by entanglements of landscapes, water and violent loss: Tatiana Huezo’s Tempestad [Tempest] (2016) and Betzabé García’s Los reyes del pueblo que no existe [Kings of Nowhere] (2015). Huezo lingers over different landscapes to evoke a dispersive cartography of dispossession existing beneath the surface of political visibility in contemporary Mexico. García’s documentary focuses on infrastructural and criminal violence in San Marcos, Sinaloa, a ghosted town that was flooded following the construction of the Picachos dam. The landscapes appearing in both films are strewn with different bodies of water and composed of discarded, decaying and ruined forms. Drawing on Jill Casid’s work on ‘necrolandscaping’ (2018) and Cristina Rivera Garza’s concept of desapropiación (2013), I deploy the concept of ‘landscapes of desapropiación’ to theorise how Huezo and García marshal deformative landscapes to index violence from a remove in the context of representation’s practical and ethical fragmentation.

Emerging Narratives in the Wake of Homicide: Victim, Survivor and Transcender

This work draws upon participant observation of 96 victim-centred events, 36 intensive interviews with individuals who had lost loved ones to homicide (co-victims), and content analysis of a variety of written narratives. Using a symbolic interactionist framework, it presents three narrative types that were found to emerge in the wake of violent loss. Termed ‘victim’, ‘survivor’, and ‘transcender’ narratives, this paper demonstrates how each narrative type is distinct in terms of focus, tone and purpose. In doing so, it offers insight into the aftermath of crime as it relates to the victim experience.

Novel Application of Skills for Psychological Recovery as an Early Intervention for Violent Loss: Rationale and Case Examples

This article describes a novel application of Skills for Psychological Recovery (SPR)—a brief, early intervention developed by the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network—for families grieving the violent death of a loved one. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, SPR incorporates cognitive-behavioral skills-building modules to help survivors cope with trauma-related distress and posttrauma resource loss. The authors describe the intervention and illustrate the use of SPR for violent loss by presenting data from two cases involving a suicide survivor and a homicide survivor. Implications for future research are discussed.