A potência política de um feminino corpo-memória

Abstract

Guided by a body-memory, which in recovering the past from the unsaid reveals its latency in the present, in Jamás el fuego nunca (2007), by Diamela Eltit, literature, politics and History intersect at all times. It is a narrative in which an unnamed woman recalls past episodes while examining the banality of the present she shares with her mate, the degraded image of an authoritarian militant leadership. Resuming the memory of the Chilean dictatorship based on what is perhaps its most sinister feature – the disappearance –, in this novel, Eltit approaches historical reality to add to the discussion a perspective which is unrealizable outside the horizon of art. In this paper we are interested in investigating how the conversion of this trace of the past into an aesthetic strategy – when highlighting other ways of visibility and intelligibility – dialogues with the concept of History elaborated by Walter Benjamin.