El cos com a espai territorialitzat a “La filla estrangera”, de Najat El Hachmi

Human experience is inscribed in the body as a place of production of meanings. As a cultural category, the body has been approached in relation to sexuality, memory, history and language, among others. In a postmodern and postcolonial context, the body functions as a place of conflict and identity. The present study addresses the subject of the body in relation to the transnational space of migration. The border between here and there (Catalonia and Morocco) constitutes a demarcation with which it is possible to establish parallels with the spatiality of the body. First of all, the protagonist's somatic traits will be presented, since the external difference negatively marks an ethnic border that has to do with the language of communication. Here I will describe how the body is a sign of distinction that marks ethnic differences. Next, I will talk about the body as the place where the confine itself is inscribed. On the one hand there is the physical border between Morocco and Catalonia, on the other, an imaginary line that runs through the entire body of la filla estrangera, a line that, in the past, was visible in the form of a line that the women of her original town used to get tattooed. Finally, we will see how the line is a metaphor for the emotions, often of pain, that have to do with migration as a traumatic experience