Copyright by Nancy Jacqueline Tille-Victorica 2014
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Copyright by Nancy Jacqueline Tille-Victorica 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Nancy Jacqueline Tille-Victorica Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Corporeality of Trauma, Memory, and Resistance: Writing the Body in Contemporary Fiction from Chile and Argentina Committee: Naomi Lindstrom, Supervisor Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba Susan Sage Heinzelman Jill Robbins Alexandra Wettlaufer The Corporeality of Trauma, Memory, and Resistance: Writing the Body in Contemporary Fiction from Chile and Argentina by Nancy Jacqueline Tille-Victorica, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2014 Dedication In loving memory of Marianne Tille, Georgette Wandfluh, and Madeleine Tille. To Tristan and Justine. Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to Professor Naomi Lindstrom, my dissertation supervisor, for generously offering me her time, support, and guidance throughout my graduate career and especially during this project. I am particularly grateful for her detailed feedback during the writing process, which has made me a better writer. I am also thankful to the members of my dissertation committee, Professors Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Susan Sage Heinzelman, Jill Robbins, and Alexandra Wettlaufer. Their expertise and advice have helped me become a more confident and informed scholar. My thanks also go to Professors Marlene Gottlieb and Sonia Labrador-Rodríguez for encouraging me to pursue graduate studies in Latin American literature. I am deeply grateful to Alicia Kozameh and Diamela Eltit for their exceeding generosity in giving of their time and hospitality, as well as in sharing with me moving memories and fascinating anecdotes. Their enthralling work and relentless commitment to justice are an inspiration. I have been fortunate to have a supportive group of colleagues whose input, encouragement, and friendship have been invaluable to me along the way. I express my appreciation to Qing Ai, Karen Chilstrom, Meredith Clark, Ashwini Ganeshan, Joe Fees, Sean Manning, Enrique Navarro, Adriana Pacheco, and Becky Thompson. I am also endebted to my dear friend Guadalupe de la Rosa whose help and kindness over the past few years have been critical to my successfully balancing work, studies, and family. I thank Lauren Alexander for keeping me healthy, and Christine Bristow for being there. Friends and family in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Argentina have also been incredibly supportive, and I owe them many thanks for their cheers, among them: v Yannick Bertholet, Karine Centanni, Françoise Emery, Ellen and Carlos A. Victorica, and Anneke Victorica. This project would not have been possible without the unconditional love and support of my sisters, Roxane and Aurélie Tille, and of my parents, Jacqueline and Philippe Tille, merci. Last but not least, I am forever grateful to Carlos for his love and patience, and to Tristan and Justine for illuminating this journey with joy and laughter, reminding me every day that happiness is a state of mind. vi The Corporeality of Trauma, Memory, and Resistance: Writing the Body in Contemporary Fiction from Chile and Argentina Nancy Jacqueline Tille-Victorica, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Naomi Lindstrom This dissertation looks at the representation and impact of gendered violence in the novel Pasos bajo el agua (1986) and in the short stories in Ofrenda de propia piel (2004) by Argentine author and former political prisoner Alicia Kozameh (b. 1953), as well as in Jamás el fuego nunca (2007) and Impuesto a la carne (2010), two novels by Chilean writer Diamela Eltit (b. 1949). By examining the particular expressions of physical and psychological pain in the aforementioned texts, I demonstrate that Kozameh and Eltit write the female body to simultaneously represent a corporeality that, until recently, has rarely been expressed in literature, and reconstruct a body that has been traumatized by state-sponsored violence and by what could be considered economic violence. Both of them denounce violence, torture, disappearances, exile, and indifference to justice as painful events that not only damage the spirits of the victims, but that are also inscribed upon the physical body. I also show how each author addresses the overlapping of individual and collective traumatic memories and how these are felt in the body as well. Finally, I argue that writing the materiality of the lived body, from its vulnerability to its resilience, provides for Kozameh and Eltit valuable insight into the ways in which female bodies are able to resist and reassess the meaning imposed on them by legally-endorsed and non-official systems of oppression. Their work thus has direct vii social relevance that goes beyond feminism’s countering of male dominance and women’s rights. Yet, I also show that they manifest their feminist commitment by using the voice and body of female subjects to incorporate marginalized Chilean and Argentine bodies into the linguistic realm in order to provide a fuller understanding of female corporeality in Latin America. viii Table of Contents Introduction .......................................................................................................1 The Authors and Their Texts .....................................................................10 Chapter Overview .....................................................................................23 Chapter One. The Body ..................................................................................26 1.1. Body Studies .....................................................................................29 1.1.1. Maurice Merleau Ponty's Phenomenology: How the Body Experiences Power............................................................................31 1.1.2. Michel Foucault's Genealogies: How Power Constructs the Body.................................................................................................35 1.1.3. Recent Theories of Embodiment .............................................38 1.2. Writing the Body in/from Latin America ............................................49 1.2.1. Writing the Female Body in/from Latin America.....................50 Chapter Two. Alicia Kozameh's Fictionalized Testimony: Writing the Body to Document Trauma, Resistance, and Survival ...................................64 2.1. The Dirty War and its Aftermath: Erasing the Subversive Body..........67 2.2. Alicia Kozameh: A Voice of Resistance and Survival.........................75 2.3. Pasos bajo el agua and Ofrenda de propia piel...................................79 2.3.1. Facts or Fiction?......................................................................82 2.4. Writing the Body to Denounce, Resist, and Exorcise Trauma..............86 2.5. Expressing and Resisting Embodied Violence, Captivity, and Exile....88 2.6. Writing the Female Body to Seek Healing and Liberation ................101 Chapter Three. Pain, Survival, and Gender in Jamás el fuego nunca by Diamela Eltit .........................................................................................110 3.1. A Voice Against the Official Discourse of the State..........................113 3.2. Jamás el fuego nunca........................................................................117 3.3. Political Demise: His Embodied Pain................................................119 3.4. Rape and Childbirth: Her Physical Traumas......................................123 3.5. Melancholia and Resentment: Her Emotional Pains ..........................128 ix 3.6. Transportation of Psychic Pain: Her Coping Mechanism...................134 3.7. Old Age: Gender Blind Pains............................................................137 Chapter Four. Biopower, Body Commodification, and Defying the Neoliberal Logic in Impuesto a la carne by Diamela Eltit .....................................143 4.1. Pinochet's Legacy: A Ruthless Free-Market Economy ......................146 4.2. Impuesto a la carne ..........................................................................154 4.3. Commodifying the Marginalized Body .............................................158 4.3.1. Racialized Bodies..................................................................166 4.3.2. Gendered Bodies...................................................................174 4.4. Maternal/Female Bodies as Sites of Resistance.................................182 Conclusions.....................................................................................................189 Bibliography ....................................................................................................198 x Introduction In recent years, the Chilean government’s interests and financial support of Santiago’s vibrant cultural scene have been remarkable and have contributed to what some consider to be the cultural rebirth of Chile’s capital city. The construction of the impressive Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center, inaugurated in 2010 on the site of the historically controversial Diego Portales’ building,1 was financed by the state and epitomizes Santiago’s thriving cultural landscape. Recent private initiatives have also contributed to the city’s booming cultural scene, which consists of over fifty theatrical venues, numerous art cinema theaters, galleries and