2022 | Olga Albarran Caselles
Publisher: Ediciones Libertarias
Full description:
If all literature is born from a conflict, the works that arise from maternal ambivalence have all the necessary ingredients to be considered universal literature, despite the fact that they have not yet found their place in the canon. (Pro)creación explores the literature of gestation and, from literary criticism, investigates how different authors from contemporary Spain have captured their relationship with procreation in artistic language. In dialogue with theories on the writing of the self, feminist criticism and recent studies on reproduction, this volume starts from the present to examine the procreative process in the autobiographical novel, the epistolary diary and the personal chronicle, taking as reference three representative works: Who wants to be a mother, by Silvia Nanclares (2017); Waiting Time , by Carme Riera (1998); and nine moons, by Gabriela Wiener (2004).
In these pages it is shown that textualizing, from the point of view of the pregnant subject, a traditionally silenced event makes it possible to reclaim the social and political aspects of reproduction, as well as maternal agency in a process that is both creative and reproductive. By linking reproduction and writing, the analyzed authors open up new expressive possibilities that challenge the androcentric conception of the subject, vindicating the affective aspects of the relationality that is established during the search for conception and gestation.
In this way, the expression of affection —bodily emotion— problematizes the binary of Western thought, making visible the insoluble union of the mind and the body that creates and procreates. Despite the fact that procreation has been confined to literary silence, this does not imply a vacuum: it is, on the contrary, an elastic and dynamic silence that has been filled with critical questions to give rise to a debate that cannot be postponed. This book tries to keep that conversation active so that it does not remain, as has traditionally happened with matters related to the maternal world, in a mere whisper.