Es un ser fragmentado que al intentar escapar de un orden patriarcal asfixiante acaba siendo destruida por ese mismo sistema. En Garro y Págano, la representación de la loca se atiene al concepto de lo abyecto que presenta por Julia Kristeva en su obra Powers of Horror. Mientras que todos los textos presentan a la loca como una figura de quiebra contra comportamientos y espacios tradicionalmente asociados a lo femenino, los métodos empleados para llevar a cabo tal tarea responden a dos concepciones diferentes de la locura. Este libro intenta llevar dicho vacío crítico al mismo tiempo que también explora las dificultades a las que las escritoras aún se enfrentan para crear protagonistas liberalizadas e independientes. Sin embargo, hasta ahora no existe ningún estudio crítico que explore la relevancia de esta presencia y/o sus diferentes manifestaciones. La presencia ubicua de la loca en la cultura mexicana ha sido desde siempre destacada y, por ejemplo, la escritora Edmée Pardo a principios del siglo XXI habla del llamado imaginario de la enfermedad para referirse a la omnipresencia de mujeres enfermas, principalmente la loca, en la literatura mexicana producida por mujeres. Re(de-)generando identidades: Locura, feminidad y liberalización en Elena Garro, Susana Pagano, Ana Castillo y María Amparo Escandón.Įste libro examina la figura de la loca en cuatro novelas publicadas en los años noventa, dos mexicanas y dos mexicano-americanas. Thus, the madwoman is presented as a more superior and rational being and madness represents a journey towards darkness which is nevertheless necessary in order to reach clarity and completeness. However, in Castillo and Escandón she is constructed in a more positive and visionary way, more in accordance with the idea of the New Mestiza that Gloria Anzaldúa develops in her writing Borderland/La frontera.
The madwoman is presented as a fragmented being which, in attempting to escape from an oppressive patriarchal system, ends up destroyed/abjected by that same order. In Garro and Págano, the madwoman largely corresponds to the concept of the abject that Julia Kristeva presents in her ground-breaking book, Powers of Horror. Thus, whilst all the texts coincide in presenting the madwoman as a figure of rupture with behaviours and spaces traditionally associated with the feminine, the methods employed to construct this figure respond to two different conceptions of madness.
This book aims to fulfil this critical gap and also explore the difficulties that women writers still face when trying to liberate their female protagonists. However, to date there is no critical study that explores the relevance of this presence and/or its different manifestations. The ubiquitous presence of the madwoman in Mexican culture has not passed unnoticed indeed, at the beginning of the twenty-first century the writer Edmée Pardo talks about the so-called imaginario de la enfermedad to refer to the ever-present images of sick women, namely the madwoman, in Mexican women’s literature. This book examines the figure of the madwoman in four novels, two Mexican and two Mexican-American, published in the 1990s.
Centre for Continuing Professional Development.