Helena Araújo, el devenir afuera: de la Colonia al exilio, de la confesión a la auto-ficción

Abstract

Divided into three chapters, my Ph.D. Dissertation, entitled "Helena Araújo, el devenir afuera: de la Colonia al exilio, de la confesión a la auto-ficción," examines how Araújo′s work is organized around the spatial-temporal discontinuity provoked by the exile of the feminine character. Using Gilles Deleuze′s concept of ‘rhizome’, this dissertation seeks to demonstrate how the feminine character could become-other on the condition that she changes territory by moving from the Colony to the exile.

The first chapter is a revision of the symbolic formation of the Colony drawn as a territory of control in a corpus of literary women’s works in Colombia from 18^th to 20^th centuries. The goal of this revision is to illustrate the symmetry between the confessional narrative modes and the controlling structure of the Colony.

The second chapter defines and analyzes the first movement of Araújo′s work: from the Colony to the exile. In this chapter I seek to demonstrate how the exile′s distance changes the representation of a same place. For instance, in La M de las moscas (1970), the narration is structured around the experience of the uncanny and the abjection while in Fiesta en Teusaquillo (1981), the narration is organized from the exile′s perspective and then it is realized as an experience of memory.

The third chapter defines and analyzes the second movement of Araújo’s work: from confession to auto-fiction. In Las cuitas de Carlota (2003), Araújo picks up the thread of the epistle narrative mode proper of the end of the 19^th century′s feuilleton, depicting thus an anti-heroin protagonist. In Esposa fugada y otros cuentos viajeros (2009), Araújo inverts the traditional discourses and representations of woman producing a contra-discursive feminine character. In this chapter, I seek to demonstrate how the historical reconstruction of the feminine character in fact deconstructs the Colony′s discipline and punishment discourses by producing auto-fictional representations drawn either as a paradox or as an aporia.

Using Michel Foucault′s concept of ‘archeology of knowledge’, this study ultimately reconsiders Araújo′s tradition in the context of Colombian feminine writing inasmuch as it revises feminine discourses and their relation to power′s practices.

Key words: Colony, exile, confession, auto-fiction, becoming-other, territory.