El acto amoroso de la escritura en la ficción de Clarice Lispector

Canedo Sánchez de Lozada, Mónica Alejandra (2011) El acto amoroso de la escritura en la ficción de Clarice Lispector. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.

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Abstract

This dissertation explores Clarice Lispector's writing in three of her novels: A Paixão Segundo G.H., Água Viva, and A Hora da Estrela. The critical studies on this author typically center on three distinct points: (1) an examination of mysticism in relation to silence, (2) an underscoring of social criticism in Lispector's work, (3) a focus on the female role and its fractures. Taking a different path, and following poststructuralist thought, I demonstrate that writing constructs itself in order to be destroyed. Writing's "death" appeals to an aperture into the Other, so that it can inhabit a continuous life, which includes life and death. This aperture implies a sacrifice of writing's grammatical logic, a rupture with a rational order, and a contestation of the cumulative/capitalist system from a plethora of characters. To what extent, then, is this writing an act of love? And what are the ways in which it is constructed to be such an act of love? The answer can be summarized in one word: desire. Lispector's language is saturated with desire (desire for other human beings, for things, for animals, for God, etc.). This writing thus stretches itself to its limits for a desire that, paradoxically, does not necessarily go outside of a system, but inside of the intimate life of the characters, things, or animals. In this sense, the author goes back to the most organic level of life. From that place she inhabits and feeds the characters, the writing, and the readers with the power of life. Beyond the thematic of love in Lispector's work, I argue that language itself surrenders to desire; love therefore circulates within the writing, which breaks free of the "secure" trends of language, defying its logic, so that it comes to be possible to feel the silent identity of the world. Clarice Lispector's fiction mesmerizes us with what might be called obscure passages, which find their raison d'être in the strength of sensation rather than logic.

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