Consuming Death on National Television: Necroliberalism and the Cyborg Nation in Pepe Rojo’s Ruido gris

The present article examines the confluence of neoliberalism and technological advances in Mexico in the 1990s by means of the short story Ruido gris (1996) by Pepe Rojo. The story narrates the life of an unnamed character who has become an “ocular reporter” after having a camera surgically installed in his right eye. This situation invites a fruitful dialogue between cyborg theory –which has viewed technological hybridity as liberating– and biopolitics, in a neoliberal context in which large companies profit from human death and suffering. I interpret the narrator as an actor robo sacer, in that his cyborg condition contributes to his marginalization and the same time constitutes his means of resistance. The story thus permits us to question the extent to which cybernetic resistance can be useful in a society whose only logic is that of profit. The story recognizes certain paths toward a limited cybernetic resistance, but doubts its potential to change the dominant economic and biopolitical structures, since most attempts at resistance end up validating the necroliberal order.