Castle & Crook: Necroliberalism and Cartographies of Abandonment in Maquilapolis (City of Factories) and Señorita Extraviada (Missing Young Woman)

Abstract “Castle & Crook” argues that the documentary films Maquilapolis (City of Factories) (dir. Vicky Funari, Sergio De La Torre, Mexico/US, 2006) and Señorita Extraviada (Missing Young Woman) (dir. Lourdes Portillo, Mexico/US, 2001) offer critical insights into the necropolitical dimensions of neoliberal modernization along the US-Mexico border during the post-NAFTA era through the turn of the millennium. Both films represent the intersection of neoliberalism and necropolitics, particularly in terms of the spatial aspects or modalities of necropower that inhere in neoliberal development. Moreover, I refer to this complex and violent assemblage of neoliberalism and necropolitics as “necroliberalism” in order to capture the specific ways in which neoliberal discourses of responsibilization and prudentialism serve to reproduce and maintain necropolitical governing in the Mexico-US border region in the context of transnational political activism.