Page/Link:Page URL:HTML link:The Free Library. Retrieved Jun 27 2019 fromAt the heart of Luisa Valenzuela's narrative is a deeppreoccupation with the use of power, the abuse of power, and thestructures of domination which permeate the most basic aspects of ourexistence. These structures of domination are based on the struggleimplied in the idea of politics. What is meant here by politics is thecompetition between diverse interest groups for power, leadership, andthe allocation of value. These structures of domination surface in thepolitics of the body, the politics of sexuality, the politics oflanguage, and the politics of the state, particularly the authoritarianstate.
Free Online Library: Politics of the body in Luisa Valenzuela's 'Cambio de armas' and 'Simetrias.' By 'World Literature Today'; Literature, writing, book reviews Authoritarianism Analysis Body, Human (Philosophy) Political aspects Human body Power (Philosophy) Socialization Women.
The narrative of Luisa Valenzuela skillfully portrays theinterdependence between each of these levels of political exchange andunderscores the serious problems embedded in structures of dominationand their repercussion from one level of our existence into others.Valenzuela's two stories 'Cambio de armas' (1982)and 'Simetrias' (1993) explore the relationship between body,language, and power, as well as the coercive structures that privilegeone gender, social order, or political view over another. Both of thestories, which deal with the plight of female torture victims, takeplace in Argentina during the period of military dictatorship called the'Dirty War' (1976-83), a period that was euphemisticallyreferred to by the government as the 'Proceso de reorganizacionnacional' (Process of National Reorganization). At this time allcivil rights were suspended, and the military dictatorship had free reinto seize anyone suspected of being a subversive. This period of extrememilitary repression began with the coup of General Jorge Videla, whosemain target was the urban guerrillas and leftist organizationsresponsible for terrorism.
However, of the estimated six thousand totwenty thousand desaparecidos or 'disappeared' victims,relatively few were actually terrorists. (Lewis, 449). In these two stories the author not only analyzes the repression,subjugation, and violence exerted by the totalitarian regime on itsvictims, but also shows that this same repression is embedded in theculture through its perceptions of body and gender differences, as wellas evident in the language which structures the social order.
Therefore,parallel to the study of the literature, this analysis reviews anevolution of the concept of dominance and subjugation that underlieshuman relations and is reflected in fiction. In doing so, it brieflyfocuses on common denominators in the views of G. Hegel, JacquesLacan, and Michel Foucault, who offer valuable insight into thepsychological, social, and political variables that structure societyaccording to a system of power relationships. Hegel shapes his view ofhuman relations in terms of the master-and-slave dichotomy explained inhis Phenomenology of the Mind (217-27).
The master/slave dialecticsuggests that a subject is only conscious of itself when it has beforeit another consciousness. At this time it comes outside itself and findsitself in the other being. What it wants is the recognition of theother.
The two subjects then must prove themselves in what Hegel calls astruggle for life and death in which they risk their life to obtainfreedom in the form of the truth of their own being. The outcome of thisstruggle results in a subject that exists for itself, the master, and asubject that is dependent on the other, the slave.Lacan, who studied Hegel, views the master/slave dialectic as arationale for the way in which subjects constitute their genderidentity. His reading of the dialectic places the emphasis on desire notso much for recognition, but desire for that which is lacking, which hecalls the 'object a' or missing object ('Desire,'15-16). What is crucial in Lacan's account of the formation ofsexuality is that woman is construed as the one who is lacking. The mostobvious lack is that of the male organ (as pointed out by Freud). Lacanexplains that what the organ represents is the abstract concept ofphallus, which he defines as language, authority, and power. Hence, hesuggests, society is structured around a valorization of male discourseas represented in the association between possessing the phallus,possessing the word, and possessing the authority.
Luisa Valenzuela Papitos Story
Hegel'smaster/slave dialectic and Lacan's theory of the formation ofsexuality vis-a-vis the phallus reflect a patriarchal view of societybased on dominance and subordination. Woman is viewed as the other ofman and as such is perceived (by man) as mystery, lack, and loss.
InHegelian terms, the man is positioned as the master who sees in theother a means of defining himself and his superior value. The woman, onthe other hand, is positioned as the slave whose identity is dependenton that of the master and his desires. Lacan's sexual metaphor forthe distribution of power within society has been taken to task byfeminists such as Irigaray and Kristeva, who have critiqued his thoughtas implicated in the phallocentric system it describes. Others, such asRose and Mitchell, have seen Lacan's theories not as a reflectionof male supremacy, but as an exposition of the arbitrary nature of bothmale and female sexual identity.(2). Whereas Lacan puts emphasis on the power of language to mold andaffect our psyche and social relations, Michel Foucault focuses moreliterally on the body itself, developing a historical account of how thehuman body has been molded, manipulated, and conceptualized as the sitein which power and knowledge exert their control. Lacan'smetaphorical reading of the power relations implied in sexual differencetakes on a physical and carnal emphasis in Foucault's History ofSexuality. 'Sexual relations - always conceived in terms of themodel act of penetration, assuming a polarity that opposed activity andpassivity - were seen as being of the same type as the relationshipbetween a superior and a subordinate, an individual who dominates andone who is dominated, one who commands and one who complies, one whovanquishes and one who is vanquished' (215).
Since sexual relationswere seen as social rivalries, the active role was valorized over thepassive one because of its capacity of dominating, penetrating, andasserting itself.One of the merits of Valenzuela's narrative is that she isable to create a fictional world which weaves together all thesestructures of domination to create a pattern that reflects the complexdynamics of an existence based on oppression. In her story 'Cambiode armas' it becomes evident that authoritarian regimes are areflection of the sexual and social organization of the culture. Thestory is constructed as a series of episodes each headed by a title thatputs emphasis on a significant object or issue. The fragmented nature ofthe structure reflect the fragmented nature of the psyche of theprotagonist, who has lost her memory and perceives reality only as sheexperiences it in the present. To her the past is a gap, a deep darkwell of forgetfulness which she has repressed in her unconscious. Whatshe has repressed is the fact that she has been apprehended by thecolonel she had attempted to kill and that he has become her torturer aswell as the abusive lover who uses her as a sexual slave.
In the processshe has lost her identity, and the colonel, who is called Hector andlater Roque, is reconstructing her identity in terms of what he wantsher to be. He has called her Laura and has placed a photograph in theapartment where she is imprisoned, in which she appears in a weddingdress with an absent expression while he stands next to her lookingtriumphant. Her lack of identity is mirrored in the fact that the manwho is supposed to be her husband could be any man to her@ she calls himby many different names, not knowing for sure who he really is. Thissignals the fact that this specific colonel is important not as anindividual but as a type, a dominating force, implied in the name withwhich he signs the wedding photo, Roque (hard like a rock).The section called 'The Mirrors' is a key tounderstanding the dynamics of the relationship between the torturer andhis victim.
He and the woman are in bed in a room where the walls andceiling are covered with mirrors. Her reflection in the mirrors comesback to her 'inverted and distant' (114); that is to say, shedoes not recognize herself as the sexual slave he has made of her. Thescene is reminiscent of Lacan's mirror stage, in which the subjectconstitutes her image of herself as a whole being (Ecrits, 4). By seeingherself inverted, the protagonist understands subconsciously that hertrue self is not the one which she is experiencing in that bed.
However,the colonel has chosen precisely the bed as the place to build heridentity according to his view. When she closes her eyes, he orders herto open them and commands her to look at what he is about to do. Hetouches her body as if drawing her piece by piece, first a leg, then aknee, then a thigh.
This action, rather than erotic, impliesRoque's perception of her as an object, as a series of body partsdefined by him.The episode brings to mind Hegel's view of the master, whosees the slave as merely another consciousness through which he canvalidate his superiority. In Lacanian words, man defines woman in termsof his own desire. When the woman once again closes her eyes, thecolonel yells at her, calling her a 'whore' and ordering herto open her eyes (115). It becomes evident that what he wants is for herto accept his definition of her, to see herself through his eyes, as amere sex object, a whore. The woman seems to recall another order, herhead being kicked in, her arm twisted, a voice commanding her to speakup, to sing, to give the names. This brief flashback is a confusedmemory of the period in which she was tortured and ordered to confessthe names of her accomplices.
When she yells 'No,' her screamis so loud that it 'seems to shatter the mirror on the ceiling,that multiplies and maims and destroys his image, almost like a bulletshot' (115). This image recalls her own attempt to kill thiscolonel and challenge the military regime. In a similar fashion theimage shows her desire to confront this man who has humiliated her. The'No' she emits underscores the fact that she has neitherconfessed the names of her accomplices nor accepted his perception ofher as a sex object. Here, as throughout the story, the parallelsbetween structures of domination in the realm of sexuality and those inthe realms of language and of politics become intertwined.In the episode called 'The Colleagues' the woman isvisited in her apartment by two military colleagues of the colonel.
Theyquestion her as to her memories, and she realizes she is beinginterrogated. She is asked about her place of origin, which is Tucuman(a province where guerrilla activity was prominent), about herrecollection of a particular bombing, about her health and her backproblems (she has a severe scar on her back). Realizing that she has nomemories, she feels completely empty, void of identity, and wants tovomit. The colonel stares at her, pleased with his work (119).
The sceneis a grotesque example of the concept of woman as lack. As in Hegel, themaster triumphs over the slave, sublates his identity, and projects hisown onto the slave. We encounter also the Lacanian idea of woman as lackand void. In Encore Lacan develops the theory that 'the woman'does not exist, for the essence of woman cannot be defined except by herlack (69). Again, the cultural image of woman unfolds into the politicalrealm, where the colonel attempts to fill this void which is woman withhis own perception of her denigrated status and sexual servility.Nevertheless, the falsity of this assumption is reflected in the falsityof the environment of the apartment.
In the apartment that serves as herprison everything is fictitious: a window that does not open, keys thatdo not work, a wedding photograph she does not recognize, the presenceof One and Two (the bodyguards of the colonel), the medications she isforced to take - all this belies the false nature of this construedreality and underscores the falsity of social constructs of gender.The section titled 'The Peephole' reflects how thesubject is created through the gaze of others. The colonel possesses thewoman in the living room after having opened the peephole in the door toallow his colleagues to watch. He exposes her for all to see in ahumiliating and violent act that places her in the position of sexualslave and himself in that of master. What is significant about thisscene is that here the colonel flaunts himself in front of the publiceye of the peephole. He faces the peephole (and the myriad onlookers itconnotes) to 'point toward it with his proud erection' (125).By so doing, he is asking to be recognized by the public as a sexualpower, a dominant master with the force of a beast. He construes hisidentity in terms of his dominance and her subjugation. He needs thegaze of others, whose recognition will authenticate the presumed natureof his selfhood.Hegel's thoughts on the subject's search for recognitionof himself in the other and Lacan's views of the gaze of others asconstituting the subject's identity (The Four, 74-77) come togetherin this denigrating episode, where both characters have been lowered tothe status of animals, one by force and the other by choice.
She feelslike 'an ambushed animal,' and he roars and paces the room ina state of excitement. The twisted nature of this scene is reflected inthe animal imagery used to describe the situation.
She is referred to asa 'bitch' while he 'bellows' and 'roars'like a 'caged animal displaying the strength of hisdissatisfaction' (126-27). This debasing ritual brings to mindLacan's analysis of the dynamics of sexual politics: 'For thesoul to come into being, she, the woman, is differentiated from it.called woman and defamed' (Encore, 69). Man, hence, equates himselfwith the soul and denigrates woman, his other, by relegating her to themerely carnal (Encore, 69).In 'Cambio de armas' the issue of torture isrationalized in terms of a sick patient who needs treatment. Theprotagonist is referred to as a sick person recovering from an illnessand taking medication for both physical and mental ailments. Foucaultshows that the illness metaphor has traditionally been used as a way ofjustifying torture. It is metaphorized as a way of 'treating'a criminal viewed as 'sick,' a 'patient' in need ofa 'cure' (because the act of defiance is considered abnormalor unnatural; Discipline, 22).
The metaphor of the sick body was alsoused by the Argentine military, whose authoritarian discourse describedthe political situation in terms of a nation whose body was'sick' and in need of radical 'surgery' to extirpatethe diseased parts. The metaphor was used as a rationale in order tojustify the extreme measures to which they resorted in the process of'curing' the 'infirm' body. The violence to bodiesand identities was explained as a necessary means of healing thenation.(3)In the denouement the colonel learns that he must leave thecountry, and he wants to tell his victim who he is and who she is sothat his victory and revenge will be fulfilled. He tells her that he hasbroken her as one breaks a horse, that he has taken her apart piece bypiece and put her back together again, rebuilding her to suit his whim(134). He shows her the weapon which was taken from her and tells herthat he has weapons too, referring to the sexual torture. Once more wesee the idea of woman as a tabula rasa to be molded by the malesignifier. The association between the phallus and the weapon indicatesthe superimposition of sexual domination and political authoritarianism.The story comes to a stop when the woman picks up the revolver and aimsat the man's back.
The lack of a final resolution (does she ordoesn't she shoot?) is a question mark that leads the reader tothink further about the structure of dominance. If she shoots him thenshe too would be resorting to violence and aggression. If she does not,then she falls into the role of passive victim lacking in power andwill. The question mark with which the story ends is an incitement tothe reader to reconsider the structures that underlie the politics ofrelationships.' Simetrias,' the title story in Valenzuela's mostrecent collection of short fiction (1993), deals even more poignantlywith the issue of torture during the 'Dirty War.' In a recentinterview she says that this story is the book's piece deresistance and that she weaves into it many incidents of female torturewhich were later revealed as having occurred during the repression. Sheadds that 'Simetrias' serves as the other side of the coin,the symmetrical counterpart to 'Cambio de armas.'
(4)'Simetrias' shares several parallels with the previous story.The protagonist is a female torture victim whose torturer has taken afancy to her, set her aside for himself, and begun to focus obsessivelyon her. Also, the character of Hector Bravo, who has surfaced before inValenzuela's work (as a doctor and torturer in Novela negra conargentinos) and is referred to in 'Cambio de armas' (where thetorturer's name is Hector before he changes it to Roque), serves in'Simetrias' as the narrator. Both stories develop the ideathat sexual aggression is mirrored in political aggression, that tortureis an extreme and perverted form of domination, and that the memory ofthe horror must be preserved in order to avoid its recurrence.
Otherparallels are the development of animal imagery to illustrate bestial tendencies and the recurrence of the military as perpetrator of sadistic acts.' Simetrias' is structured as a series of monologues thatalternate between the torturer and his victim and are strung together bymeans of the viewpoint of the narrator, Hector Bravo, who relates thesimilarities between incidents that took place in 1947 and those takingplace in 1977. The narrative set in 1947 (at the time of Peron'sfirst presidency) focuses on a relationship between a woman who goes tothe Buenos Aires zoo and an orangutan caged in that same zoo. Little bylittle, the woman and the orangutan become fascinated with each other.The orangutan takes on human characteristics and is said to have fallenin love with the woman, who in turn loses her composure and becomesanimal-like. The woman's husband is a colonel who realizes he hasbeen cuckolded by an animal and takes out his revolver to shoot thebeast. Thirty years later, in 1977, during the height of the militaryrepression in Argentina, another colonel tortures his female prisoner (acaptured subversive) on the metal table of the dark, dank quarters of ahidden detention center, close to the Buenos Aires zoo.
He has becomeobsessed with this particular woman and takes sadistic pleasure intorturing her by day and escorting her out on the town at night. Anelaborate complex of associations is developed among these four figures:the female prisoner, the orangutan, the torturer, and the woman in thezoo. The torturer's obsession with the prisoner is mirrored in theobsession between the woman in the zoo and the caged orangutan.The story reveals the sick relationship that forms between thetorturer and his victim, while allowing the reader to witness thethoughts of both as exposed in the monologues. The discourse of thetorturers reflects their belief in the fact that they possess the rightto break these women in order to punish them for having dared to subvertthe authority of the state. 'Gloriosamente es como nosotros lasmatamos, por la gloria y el honor de la patria' (Gloriously is howwe kill them, for the glory and honor of our fatherland 177). AndresAvellaneda's book on authoritarianism and culture presents awell-developed analysis of the discourse of the authoritarian regime inthe specific case of Argentina in the years 1960-83. He explains thatthe discourse centered on establishing the government as the legitimatesavior of the nation and its people, and to do so it developed amanipulative discourse that focused on upholding morals, sexual customs,religion, and national security (19-22).
The female subversives wereseen as particularly offensive because they dared to subvert not onlythe political order but also the sexual order; hence the sexual emphasison female torture: 'Las mujeres que estan en nuestro poder. Hanperdido sus nombres. Y saben dejarse atravesar porque nos hemosencargado de ablandarlas' (The women in our power have lost theirnames.
They know how to let themselves be penetrated because wehave taken charge of softening them 174). The concept of'penetration' is later associated with that of the'word,' which is seen as penetrating like a 'bullet'(174). The phallus as signifier inscribes in the woman the structure ofdomination implicit in the patriarchal symbolic order and reflected inthe association between the word, the phallus, and the bullet.The tortured women have had their names and their senses strippedaway from them. They are described as not being able to see (a referenceto the blindfolds put on them when they were being tortured), as havingan absent look in their eyes, as being mute or as having nothing but a'fine thread of a voice' left (175).
These broken women areseen as empty receptacles for the inscribing power of the torturers.' Les metemos cosas mucho mis tremendas que las nuestras porque esascosas son tambien una prolongacion de nosotros mismos y porque ellas sonnuestras.
Las mujeres' (We stick things in them that are many timesmore tremendous than ours because those things are also an extension ofour very own selves and because they are ours. The women 176). Afterstripping the women of their identity, the torturers literally'fill' them with new meaning, the meaning of terror andviolence embedded in the structure they attempted to subvert.Foucault's comments on torture as a mechanism of inscribing theparameters of power show that, historically, the torture victim had tohave his punishment 'inscribed' on his body so that it wouldbe 'legible to all,' making the guilty person the 'heraldof his own condemnation' (Discipline, 42). The victim walkedthrough the streets in a procession wearing a placard that stated his orher crime as a way of 'publishing' that crime (43). Thelinguistic metaphor illustrates the association between the body and apage on which the ruler publishes his own order. This underscoresLacan's perception that the phallic order structures society aswell as Hegel's perception that human relations are based ondominance and subjugation.
It also gives insight into the sexual natureof torture, in that the woman's act of subversion is considered athreat not only to the political structure but to the patriarchalorganization of society as well.In Valenzuela's story the crime of the victims is publishedthrough the grotesque charade of taking them out to dinner at night. Themonologues of the women relate that the torturers dress them up inbeautiful clothes, being careful to hide their scars, and take them outto eat. However, they can hardly taste the food because their dressespress so painfully on their thorax, and the torturers soon reinstitutethem into the horror and make them vomit what they have eaten (173).Later one learns that these women have been taken out to show that thetorturers have a power that is even more absolute and incontestable thanthe power of humiliation and punishment (179). That greater power is thepower to break the human spirit and make a public display of it.However, the torturers do not always succeed.
In this story, as in'Cambio de armas,' they have failed to extract a confessionfrom their victims. As Foucault points out, one of the aims of tortureis to force a confession from the criminal in order to make himacknowledge the established order as 'true' as well as provideknowledge of accomplices (35-40). The issue of confession is a crucialone in both stories, because the female victims have refused to confessanything at all to the torturers. The fact that the prisoners neitherconfess nor give up the names of any accomplices denotes, in a sense,their triumph and the failure of the torturers to extract any usefuladmissions or information.The animal imagery alluded to in 'Cambio de armas' isdeveloped more fully in 'Simetrias.' Here the author developsa contrast between the human who is more savage than the beast and thebeast that is more humane than the human. Hector Bravo is obsessed withtwo occurrences: one is the sadistic relationship between the coloneland his prisoner; the other is the sexual attraction he witnessesearlier between the woman in the zoo and the orangutan. Bravosuperimposes these two occurrences and often confuses them.
During oneof the woman's visits with the orangutan, they stare at each otherthrough the bars of the cage and the once simple and comical animal isno longer the same; he looks at her with the eyes of a human in love(178). She, on the other hand, has become tattered and alienated, withthe air of someone who lives in the jungle (181).The second focal point of Bravo's obsession is therelationship between the colonel and his captive. The colonel, whoseactions toward his victim are extremely savage, becomes so fascinatedwith her that he thinks he has fallen in love with her. He is no longertorturing her for the sake of the nation but realizes in her a sadisticpassion that he construes as love. In a sense, his feelings for her seemto have softened him. When his superiors realize this, they send himaway to Europe so that they can kill the woman. Conversely, his prisoneris described in terms of an animal.
The colonel has ordered an expensivenecklace for her, a tight choker that looks a bit like a dog collar, anda snakeskin belt he fancies as a leash with which he could walk her allover the world (183). The association between the caged orangutan andthe captive woman reaches its peak in a grotesque scene in which thevictim is being tortured with an electric cattle prod; in the samesentence her spasms are compared to the jerky movements of the orangutanwho expresses his attraction for the woman in the zoo (181). Theorangutan couple act as a parody of the other couple, reflecting theperverted nature of each relationship.In the final lines of the story the two time periods appear tohave become one and the same in the mind of Hector Bravo. The bulletthat kills the orangutan and the one that kills the torture victim alsoseem to be one and the same (187). The story ends by relating that whenthe two lovers return to the site of their desire, the woman to the zooand the colonel from Europe, they find their respective cages empty andare stricken by terror and hate (187).
Of the other two, the prisonerand the orangutan, we learn that they both die as a result of beingloved too much.Two hypotheses come to mind regarding the symmetries implied inthis tale. First, in the symmetry reflected in the juxtaposition of thetwo couples we see that the zoo woman's desire for the orangutanhas humanized the beast and that the beast's desire for her hasanimalized her. Similarly, the bestial colonel seems to acquiresomething akin to what he construes as the human ability to love, whilethe prisoner (who never does acknowledge him) is given animalcharacteristics attributed to her by the colonel. Each lover has becomecaged into the relationship.
Each is trapped in his or her own desirefor the other. These two examples suggest the Lacanian notion that thesubject is trapped by the structure of its desire.
They also show thatpeople are the victims of their own passions as well as of the passionsof others.The second symmetry is that of the historical times. In 1947 JuanPeron had been president for a year.
During that time, the police-stateinstruments which had been developed earlier (control of politicalactivity by the police, almost unlimited power to search and detain, theuse of torture) were all institutionalized (Weisman, 89). In 1997 therepressive mechanisms of the government ballooned into what became a waragainst its own citizens; hence the name 'Dirty War.' Historycame full circle, repeating the violence and oppression embedded in thesystem. As suggested in a passage that equates the screams of thetorture victims with those of archaic wounded animals in the depths ofPaleolithic cavern (182), the story shows that violence and dominationhave existed for ages and that they continue to surface in a world whichexists under the illusion of being civilized.Valenzuela does not offer any facile solutions to the recurringincidents of the abuse of power. What she does is effectively expose theacts of terror and the mechanisms of dominance and subjugation thatpermeate our sexual relationships and overlap into our sociolinguistic and political structures.
The reader is challenged to give thought tothese dilemmas and to take consciousness of the paradigms that mold ourworld and structure our psyche. Neither Hegel's master-and-slavedichotomy, nor lacan's phallic order, nor Foucault's politicsof the body reflects constructive paradigms. The challenge to all of usis not only to denounce these systems, as Valenzuela does, but also toactively deconstruct them in order to reconstruct a more humane way ofrelating to one another.Saint Mary's University(1) This quote by Hebe Bonafini, a madre de la Plaza de Mayo, is fromthe New York Times article by Calvin Sims, 'Argentine Tells ofDumping Dirty War, Captives into Sea,' 13 March 1995, p. A1.(2) Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudienne, eds.Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, New York, Norton, 1982.(3) Guillermo O'Donnell, 'Tensions in theBureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Question of Democracy,'The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, ed. David Collier, Princeton(N.J.), Princeton University Press, 1979.(4) Gwendolyn Diaz, interview with Luisa Valenzuela, EmoryUniversity, Atlanta, November 1994.Works CitedAvellaneda, Andres. Censura, autoritarismo y cultura: Argentina1960-1983.
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Luisa Valenzuela Cambio De Armas
Luisa Valenzuela in, 1990Luisa Valenzuela (born November 26, 1938) is a post-' novelist and short story writer. Her writing is characterized by an experimental style which questions hierarchical social structures from a feminist perspective. She is best known for her work written in response to the. Works such as Como en la guerra (1977), Cambio de armas (1982) and Cola de lagartija (1983) combine a powerful critique of dictatorship with an examination of patriarchal forms of social organization and the power structures which inhere in human sexuality and gender relationships.