Barrientos, Mónica
(2015)
"El reclamo de la herida". Textualidades Corporales en la Obra de Diamela Eltit.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Diamela Eltit is one of the most prolific and prominent Chilean writers of her generation. She started writing under Pinochet’s dictatorship, and since then has become known for her intellectual and politically resonant writings that powerfully explore the intricate relation between ethics and aesthetics in the context of the neoliberal turn in Chile. Her literary and visual work is a good example of “the Latin American aesthetic turn” (Sergio Rojas) in contemporary Chile.
The dissertation’s analysis focuses on postmodern aesthetics and draws on theories of gender, the visual arts, and philosophy in order to analyze Eltit’s range of resistances to a political and social order that constitutes a disciplinary system aimed at constant surveillance. In Eltit’s work, the female body is the main tool used to cause a rupture within the persistent standardization of bodies in a rigid society. Thus, Eltit’s novels are allegories of contemporary Latin American society insofar as the power of the body, bio-power and its effects on spaces comprise a scenario that is used to represent the material transformation of power relationships and subjectivities.
Notions of space and place are fundamental to this reading of Eltit’s work. Places are constructed through power relations that construct rules and define boundaries. These boundaries are both social and spatial, controlling identities of belonging and exclusion to and from a place. Because power and space are represented as inherent to the body as movement, transformation, and individual and collective practices, I focus on place and sexuality in both corporeal and discursive terms by emphasizing the sociological and historical effects of space and other geographic concepts as they merge on the individual and collective inter-relations at work in the novels. My analysis proceeds to the use of language, metaphor, and representation in the definition of gender and sexuality, converging on questions of subjectivity, identity and the sexed body. I utilize theoretical tools from philosophy, politics and feminism in order to analyze the critique immersed in Eltit’s work that aims to destabilize and transform gender relations and power hierarchies.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
16 June 2015 |
| Date Type: |
Publication |
| Defense Date: |
13 April 2015 |
| Approval Date: |
16 June 2015 |
| Submission Date: |
16 April 2015 |
| Access Restriction: |
No restriction; Release the ETD for access worldwide immediately. |
| Number of Pages: |
288 |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Hispanic Languages and Literatures |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
Eltit, cuerpo, texto, Latin America |
| Date Deposited: |
16 Jun 2015 13:29 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Nov 2016 14:27 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/24919 |
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