Microfísica sexista del poder: El caso Alcàsser y la construcción del terror sexual

by Nerea Barjola

MICROFISICA SEXISTA DEL PODER NE

Genres: Feminism

320 pages, Paperback

Published April 10, 2023

Reviews

[Corvus · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I see people ask each other what their guilty pleasures are, I immediately know what comes to mind as my own, even though my experience with it is often far from pleasurable. Crime media. I am an anarchist that loves crime dramas, even as I watch them complaining to myself about the overt and insidious copaganda. I am also attracted to documentaries including those that include true crime and violence against women. To say I "love" them would be incorrect. I often have a terrible experience watching/listening to/reading about them. I believe that, as a person who tends to run towards things as a coping mechanism, it's a mix of trauma as well as my unadmirable attraction toward human spectacle as a former student of psychology. I know that this is not an uncommon thing, but I often sit there as I binge watch horrible docuseries going, "why am I doing this to myself?" When I saw the blurb for Nerea Barjola's book, The Sexist Microphysics of Power - particularly the line, "A groundbreaking feminist text that frames our obsession with true crime as a form of sexual terror," I knew I had to read it.

I am no stranger to feminist and anti-authoritarian critiques of true crime and as a result, this book at times did not bring many new things to my consciousness. As an academic text, though, it must properly set up the entire scene in order for the argument to make sense. This makes it more accessible to a person new to many of these ideas, but it still falls into the realm of academia, and thus will be read predominantly by people in a field where many things therein are agreed upon. It's very academic but not offensively so- there is a point to it and all of the jargon. It is also very specialized around an event that I had never heard of. The author does not tell us exactly what happened until around 60 pages in, so in the beginning I did feel a little lost in understanding what some of her arguments were pertaining to. That said, to create a critique like this is to walk a very fine line. How does one write about this spectacle without doing further harm? How does one create this narrative without using information that was so gratuitously used for entertainment purposes by the media being critiqued? I do not envy Barjola in this task.

As you may have already guessed, this is a rough read. I took frequent breaks. The abuse and murders of Miriam García Iborra, Antonia Gómez Rodríguez and Desirée Hernández Folch occurred in 1992 and were subject of abhorrent media spectacle which included exploitation of survivors, displaying of gratuitous imagery, sharing of unnecessary horrifying detail, amplifying of misogynistic critique and punditry, and the crafting of a narrative that furthered the trauma of the event far outside the initial victims and placed blame in all of the wrong places. Barjola's decision to only name the girls in the beginning and end is one I understand but disagree with. She discusses in the epilogue the inability of media to share the girls' stories without being flawed, but I found the lack of naming to actually contribute to their objectification in ways the author wanted to fight. Outside of this though, Barjola painstakingly details the ways the media took a horrific event and turned it into an even larger cultural trauma.

Barjola details and critiques the myriad of ways that the media exploited and reframed the narrative to place blame on the girls and on deviation from heteronormative society (in terms of the murderer.) Much of this was obvious to me, but a couple of her assessments really stuck out and gave me that aha! feeling. One was her collection of interviews with local or adjacent girls and women and their discussions of how the events and coverage affected them. We know that these events of course create fear and the media coverage of that affects how that manifests. But, these interviews, more than any analysis in the book, really showed how abhorrent and irresponsible coverage of violence can literally traumatize and create victims far outside the inner circle. I don't have the answer as to what perfect coverage looks like, but I know what it doesn't look like. This book details that and the interviews wrap it up.

Another point Barjola made that really grabbed me was in her discussion of conspiracy theories surrounding the coverage. 1992 was nothing like the internet age we have today, but the media coverage and discussion of these events still birthed plenty of conspiracy. The idea of snuff was one topic that came up, and Barjola state what in hindsight should have been obvious to me. The media is the snuff film. The way true crime media in general, but especially in this case displayed the suffering of these girls while finding ways to blame and humiliate them (and in turn all girls and women) is far more affecting and terrifying than the idea of an under the table VHS of violence. We are watching snuff when we watch this footage. This part of her argument meant a lot to me and I will be using it when asking myself in the future what kinds of media I want to consume and how.

In the epilogue added to this edition, Barjola discusses the Netflix docuseries on the case which I did not see myself. She discussed the very interesting interplay of what might be called neoliberal feminism true crime or something of the sort, where a woman creating a show like this sees it as a feminist act despite being similarly exploitative. Barjola did not take part despite being invited- if one can call it that given that they weren't actually going to feature her- as it became clear that the series was another exercise in exploitation. She discusses the importance of counter-narratives to combat the flood of violence-against-women and women/girls-as-victims media coming at us from all angles. However, while there was a short section of the book discussing some women reclaiming things like hitchhiking, going out at night, and so on, I was also left wondering how this book itself fit into the spectacle. Barjola considers it a counter-narrative, but my experience of reading it did not quite match that. I did not leave it with images of happy women and girls in Spain going out together at night or of feminist resistance. I left it with a horrible story, an anger at so many (especially men) involved, and a question of how academia plays into true crime. Perhaps that says more about me than the book, though. I do not know.

It feels as if this book is both necessary as an exposure of the horrible ways in which media can create and amplify trauma as well as another chapter of true crime media. I do not know what the answer is to how to do this "right" as I do not think there is one. Barjola seems to believe the same thing in her discussion of using the girls' names. There is no way to perfectly write about misogynistic atrocity. But, there sure as hell are ways not to. I think this book is an important exercise in exposing those mistakes and also for the reader to think hard about the media they consume. I will be asking myself more going forward what things will do to me if I choose to venture into another episode of unpleasurable guilty "pleasure" that is crime media

This was also posted to my blog and storygraph.

[Alberto Il Pelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Necesario y contundente. Un ensayo fundamental sobre el terror sexual generado a todos los niveles de la sociedad patriarcal. Como afrontarlo, destructurarlo y construir un nuevo punto de mirada, que deje de culpar las víctimas y sea el punto de partida de una nueva sociedad

[Mark Robison · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yow, an unreadable academic-jargon filled mess with a great premise. It supposedly analyzes how Spanish society and the media reacted to the deaths of three teenage girls who disappeared in 1992, yet I never could figure out what it was saying.

Before giving an excerpt, here's a blurb from the book's back cover that inspired me to get it: "The 300 pages of 'The Sexist Microphysics of Power' have been passed along from hand to hand between friends almost like smuggled photocopies with a Post-It attached: 'Read this. It's about the reasons for our fear.' Hers is a landmark in political research. - El Pais"

I made the excerpt long so you can feel the full bludgeon of the prose.

It is the need to identify the origin of power that drives me to incorporate the variable sexism into the concept of the microphysics of power. And it is in this sense that I reformulate the notion into the sexist microphysics of power. The idea is to rupture the concept at the very heart of its enunciation; sexism is inserted in such a way as to make it pivotal to the concept. This is why I speak of the sexist microphysics of power, rather than the microphysics of sexist power.

Using the sexist microphysics of power as an analytical tool allows me to establish that the knowledge and truth being disseminated, however diffusely, are sexist. If the sexist microphysics of power works in such a sophisticated way, it is because, on some level, individuals obtain or preserve given privileges through it. Depending on the position they occupy socially, privilege refers to the maintenance of an advantage, or at least not suffering a disadvantage, in relation to another individual. This idea is at the core of the sexist microphysics of power and is pivotal to making it an infallible mechanism. A form of "humanism" constitutes the sublime part of the machinery..." And on and on.

The excerpt isn't from the beginning of the book but deep in when the author is hitting her stride.

[Ishika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book & interesting ideas. Different application of the state of exception from what i’ve read before. Superrr jargon-y though I had to read so many things over and over again (took me six months!!)

[Tori Wilde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insightful at times, a snoozefest at others. Expected a bit more from this one.