Denial of discursive identity, violence and criminality: Semiotic and interdisciplinary approach

Abstract

This article presents the results and conclusions of a research study aimed at analyzing the incidence of Colombian criminals’ discourses and other people’s discourses in the configuration of the criminals’ identity, as enunciated in the works of the Colombian author Mario Mendoza and other academic and journalistic narratives. Likewise, identities were studied as discursive signs constructed from social relations; and an explanation was provided for violence and criminality as manifestations of the criminals’ denial of their identities and the rupture of the principle of discourse regulation. The study is based on the theoretical, methodological and interdisciplinary perspective of the Semiotics School of París. It showed that the violent and criminal behavior of the analyzed subjects is guided by a way of life and a narrative scheme that implies a specific configuration of discursive identities. This also involves the encounter with a self ­—oneself and others who are denied—, constant and intense dysphoric manifestations, states of nonsense and senseless that mobilize the destruction of others as representations of an unacceptable self, which tries to resignify and restore with a compensatory violence. In this way, the study seeks to contribute to the understanding of crime in Colombia and its multiple causes.