Olhares oblíquos em El cuerpo en que nací, de Guadalupe Nettel, e Sangre en el ojo, de Lina Meruane

Abstract

This research proposes the analysis of the literary works named El cuerpo en que nací (2011), by the Mexican Guadalupe Nettel, and Sangre en el ojo (2012), by the Chilean Lina Meruane. Inscribed in the contemporary HispanoAmerican context, the works strengthen relationships by sharing themes around the eye: about blindness as a specific experience to the blindness representation in literature. It explores how the protagonists’ eye conditions glimpse an antihegemonic gaze on themselves and on the world, accentuating the political character of the gaze in the studied works; for that, the theorists Marilena Chauí (1998) and Marta Pascua Canelo (2019) help on elucidating the possible subjectivities and multiplicities that emanate from the look. The purpose of this paper is to trace, from the “oblique eyes”, two main theoretical perspectives. First, bringing reflections about the literary genre, with autofiction theorists such as Philippe Lejeune (1971), Diana Klinger (2006) and Manuel Alberca (2008), we analyze the formal aspects that allow us to think about narratives as autofiction to understand the function of this literary genre. Scriptural resource within the diegeses. In the second part of the paper, a reading of the works from the perspective of Animal Studies is presented, a research area whose studies arose more broadly with the socalled “animal turn” in the end of the 20th century, and presents latent affinities with the narratives. Gabriel Giorgi (2016), Brian Massumi (2017), Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2014), Michel Foucault (2001) and Roberto Esposito (2016) are the main authors to provide theoretical support to understand how the protagonists elaborate their subalternities – arising from the eye diseases, gender and geographic situationalities – through animality.