Modernity at Gunpoint

Sophie Esch’s excellent study offers an unparalleled approach to weapons to confront modernity and, more generally, culture, across a variety of cultural production and national experiences. With the firearm as an analytical trope, Esch seeks to understand cultural responses to political violence, focusing mostly on Mexico and Nicaragua in the periods of 1910–1920, 1979–1990, and the present day.

The entirety of the work is showing us the direction that I think our field is going, showing the commonalities between Mexico, Central America, and the borderlands—even as it reaffirms the uniqueness of each context.

Esch treats the firearm as a cultural and symbolic artifact rooted in the history as well as the present of the region.

Modernity at Gunpoint is a unique and groundbreaking study on the culture of guns and the way in which material objects and the imagination about them contribute to discussions of gender, politics, and ideology. This is a rare book that organically understands the shared and diverging histories of Mexico and Central America, in ways that have been rendered urgent by new migration and economic patterns.

To the saying that ‘war is the continuation of politics by other means,' Foucault replied that ‘power is the continuation of war by other means.' Esch shows that, in the context of Mexican and Central American modern history, both sayings are relevant. Brilliantly argued, and using the rifle as a symbolic tool, she produces a striking new image of these cultures.

La transformación de la relación entre el hombre y el rifle que observamos en el trabajo de Esch es sorprendente y el resultado de una amplia investigación que incluye extensas fuentes históricas. Su corpus de cultura popular es notable, especialmente en el uso de la canción popular.

Propone un abordaje teórico y metodológico cuidadosamente elaborado que escapa etiquetas fáciles.