Intersecting Madness: Strategies of Fictionalization and Subversion in Contemporary Latin American Narratives

My dissertation examines the fictional representation of madness, what I have called literary maniagraphy —fictionalized writing about madness— in “Extracción de la piedra de locura” by Alejandra Pizarnik, “Macario” by Juan Rulfo, “La jaula de la tía Enedina” by Adela Fernández and “La culpa es de los tlaxcaltecas” by Elena Garro with the aim of scrutinizing how and to what extent their narratives destabilize hegemonic discourses to redefine social norms and identities. Given the importance of Spivak's contributions on the subaltern subject and its capacity and limits of self-representation —I understand the mad characters, central in these maniagraphies, as subaltern subjects— in each hermeneutical exercise, I inquire if these literary maniagraphies can make madness speak. The study has an interdisciplinary approach; thus, it considers some key concepts from gender studies, historiography, psychoanalysis, Foucauldian theory and, of course, race and literary theory. For the analysis of literary strategies, the concept of the chronotope elaborated by Bakhtin is key. Regarding the analysis of both, the representation of madness and, its transgressive potentiality in these maniagraphies, the notion proposed by Michel Foucault of madness, as a socio-historical construction, is a cornerstone for exploring the contingency and social transience of madness. Based on key concepts and approaches of these theories, my study argues that, on the one hand, these maniagraphies wish to operate as catalytic metaphors of a subjectivity of otherness, labeled as anomalous, that ‘speaks’ to resist the regimented behavior that regulate its identity. On the other hand, maniagraphies succumb to their transgressive intent and part of their rebellion is devoured by the dominant hegemonic discourses and practices. My dissertation is organized thematically in four chapters. Chapter I presents the theoretical and conceptual tools that support my analysis. Chapter II is a chronological tour of the representations of madness in literature focused mainly on Western culture. Comments on maniagraphies from ancient and classical times to modernity. The chapter explores how madness has helped to shape national identities and political spaces of control. It ends by presenting the complexity of Mexica society's conceptions of insanity in an attempt to open the horizon beyond Eurocentric cultural spheres of domain. Chapter III develops the hermeneutical exercise of the fictionalization and subversion strategies of the selected maniagraphies of Alejandra Pizarnik and Juan Rulfo. This chapter assesses Pizarnik's representation of the self devoured by the abyss of self-destruction in modernity. Regarding Rulfo's text, I contextualize -through a historical approach- rural post-revolutionary Mexico, where the Catholic Church and its conservative morality rule, surveil and punish. I analyze how madness questions the limits that the nation-state imposes on the individual through its microstructures of power in the intimate spheres of sexuality, the affections, the family, the ways of surviving hunger, misery, and marginality. Chapter IV analyzes the maniagraphies of Adela Fernández and Elena Garro to assess how far the transgressions of the hegemonic patriarchal normative can reach. In Fernández's text, the issue of racism and marginality are key to analyzing the representation of madness. As for Garro's maniagraphy, in addition to analyzing the ways in which patriarchy exercises violence against women in the intimate micro-space of home, I also analyze the representations of the nation state. I argue that Garro’s fictional historiographic narrative of the Spanish conquest holds a simplified notion of La Malinche and betrayal. The historical analysis of the struggles for hegemonic dominance in central Mexico between the Mexica and the Tlaxcaltecs lacks complexity. Also relevant is the socio-political analysis of the developmental stage that propels the entry into modernity of a fractured Mexican state. One with a patriarchal system of dominance that permeates the presidency of López Mateos. These historical contexts are key to understanding the scope of the transgressions and limitations that Garro's maniagraphy has in the construction of the notion of the nation and the modern state of both the pre-Hispanic peoples and contemporary Mexico of the 70's. In conclusion, my study shows that these maniagraphies manage to transcend, although with some limitations in the representation strategies of their mad characters, certain identity paradigms elaborated by the discourses of power that standardize gender roles, sexual behaviors, morality, sanctioned ways of suffering and living nostalgia