Gendered Spaces in Argentine Women s Literature

Gendered Spaces in Argentine Women s Literature

Gendered Spaces in Argentine Women s Literature Marta Sierra

GENDERED SPACES IN ARGENTINE WOMEN S LITERATURE Copyright Marta Sierra, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-12085-3 All rights reserved. First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-29896-9 ISBN 978-1-137-12280-3 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137122803 Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Sierra, Marta, 1968 Gendered spaces in Argentine women s literature / Marta Sierra. p. cm. 1. Argentine literature History and criticism. 2. Women Argentina. 3. Gender identity in literature. 4. Space and time in literature I. Title. PQ7623.W6S54 2012 860.9 3520420982 dc23 2011044513 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: May 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Alan and Alejandro, with much love. To my g r an d m ot he r, Eva r i sta, w h o in st il l e d in me the love for literature. And to Jan, whose unconditional love took me to wondrous places.

Contents Li s t of F i g u r e s P o e t r y P e r m i s si on s A ck n o w l e d g m e n t s i x x i x i i i Introduction: Gendered Spaces in Argentine Women s Literature 1 Chapter 1 Displacing Domesticity: Cosmopolitanisms, Travel Writing, and Narratives of the Home 21 Chapter 2 Of Other Spaces : Staging Repression in the Works of Griselda Gambaro and Diana Raznovich 63 Chapter 3 Global Patagonia: Rewriting the National Space 113 Chapter 4 Poetic Crossovers: The Paradoxical Spaces of Wome n s Po e t r y 157 Notes 19 9 Bibliography 217 Index 2 35

Figures 1.1 Alejandro Leveratto, Victoria Ocampo s House in Rufino de Elizalde y Castilla, Palermo Chico, Buenos Aires (built by Alejandro Bustillo, 1928). Used with permission of Alejandro Leveratto. Fotografía alejandroleveratto. 44 1.2 Victoria Ocampo s House in Rufino de Elizalde y Castilla (sketch). Used with permission of Architect Martha Levisman, President Asociación Civil ARCA, Archivos de Arquitectura Contemporánea Argentina. 44 1.3 Literary Meeting at Victoria Ocampo s house in Rufino de Elizalde y Castilla in 1931. Used with permission of Fundación Sur. 45 1.4 Victoria Ocampo s House in Rufino de Elizalde y Castilla (stairs detail). Used with permission of Architect Martha Levisman, President Asociación Civil ARCA, Archivos de Arquitectura Contemporánea Argentina. 45 3.1 Usuhaia Prison (hallways), site of the installation Diario de la luna caníbal. Used with permission of Belén Gache. 146 3.2 Diario de la luna caníbal (video still). Photograph taken from inside a prison cell. Used with permission of Belén Gache. 148 3.3 Diario de la luna caníbal (video still). Usuhaia Prison (exterior). Behind, the Cinco Hermanos Mountains. Used with permission of Belén Gache. 149 3.4 Diario de la luna caníbal. Promotional image for the installation. Used with permission of Belén Gache. 150

Permissions El jardín and Sur, included in Tener lo que se tiene by Diana Bellessi, Buenos Aires, pages 469, 515, 612, 608, and 609. 2009, Adriana Hidalgo editora. Reprinted with permission of Adriana Hidalgo editora. Vitraux del Exilio and Más sol en la Jornada, Partir, digo by Luisa Futoransky. 2010, Libros del Aire. Reprinted with permission of Libros del Aire, Madrid. Jonás, Jonás, Nuevo barco ebrio, Llanos del sur, Coraçao da Guanabara, Babel, Babel by Luisa Futoransky. 1968, Ediciones La Loca Poesía. Reprinted with permission of Ediciones La Loca Poesía. La coleccionista Cartulina de Ljubjana, Llanos del sur, Tiananmen, 4 de Junio, 1989, El patio y los abuelos, Consignas al navegante, and Poética Jueza de la mi sombra, Prender de gajo by Luisa Futoransky. 2006, Calambur Editorial. Reprinted with permission of the author and Calambur Editorial ( www.calambureditorial.com ). Islandia. A Poem by María Negroni. Translated by Anne Twitty. Pages 13, 10, 19, 69, 94, 97, 103, and 153. 2001, Station Hill, Barrytown LTD. Reprinted with permission of Station Hill Press, Inc. Night Journey by María Negroni. 2002, María Negroni. Translation of poems and introduction 2002, Princeton University Press. Reprinted with permission of Princeton University Press. A section of chapter 4, Global Patagonia: Rewriting the National Space, appeared as Global Patagonia: Belén Gache s Nomadic Writings, in Transnational Borderlands in Women s Global Networks: The Making of Cultural Resistance. eds. Clara Román-Odio and Marta Sierra. Reprinted with permission of Palgrave-Macmillan.

Acknowledgments A book is never written alone. The idea for this study began about seven years ago in a series of conversations my friend and colleague, Clara Román-Odio, and I began with the topic of gender and space, which resulted in the coedition of a special issue for the journal Letras Femeninas, Global and Local Geographies: the (Dis)locations of Contemporary Feminisms (33.1, Summer 2007) and the publication of a second volume on methodological reflections on the topic and its relationship to transnational feminisms, Transnational Borderlands: The Making of Cultural Resistance in Women s Global Networks (New York: Palgrave-MacMillan, 2011). The nurturing intellectual collaboration, along with friendship and encouragement by Clara, is a central force behind this book. To my colleagues at Kenyon College, I owe the support of an open and caring intellectual community who has encouraged my intellectual growth for the past seven years. I am particularly indebted to Linda Metzler, Travis Landry, and Daniel Harnett, who volunteered their time to read drafts and generously commented on my work. Outside Kenyon, Marcy Schwartz has offered her unconditional support throughout the years by reading sections of the manuscript and giving crucial advice during this intellectual journey. My colleague at the University of Buenos Aires, Perla Zusman, shared her wealth of knowledge of cultural geography. I am forever grateful for her generosity and kindness and the rigor of her comments on several ideas about the book. Perla and I cotaught a graduate seminar at the University of Buenos Aires, which provided much insight to the complex disciplinary connections between geography and literature. I am very grateful to the students in this seminar who helped me rethink the topic of gendered spaces from a different geopolitical perspective. Amy Kaminsky, who I later learned served as the anonymous reviewer for Palgrave, provided me with comments and insights that have enriched the contents, language, and structure of the manuscript. This book is, without a doubt, a much better product thanks

xiv Acknowledgments to her. I am also thankful to Francine Masiello for her professional support throughout the years. The course on The South that she taught at the University of Tucumán in 2005 provided much insight in the preliminary stages of my investigation. Several research trips were made possible by the financial support of different grants by Kenyon College. I am grateful to those who shared this journey throughout the years with me. The writers whose work I address in the following pages have been friends, mentors, and dear companions whom I met on different occasions. Diana Bellessi and I met for the first time at her house in Buenos Aires six years ago. Our conversations about what it means to read, write, and think in the North or in the South have been invaluable in my understanding of how location impacts the production and circulation of knowledge. Luisa Futoransky contributed her caustic sense of humor and unconditional friendship. Her ironic views about nationalism and memory helped me to rethink my own affiliations to ideas of nation and identity. I still remember with much affection her visit to Kenyon College in 2007, the visit to that old cemetery, and the blond at the local bank who would later become a protagonist of one of Luisa s poignant poems. María Negroni and I shared an ongoing conversation across many places: Buenos Aires, Brooklyn, and Buenos Aires, again. As one of the characters in her poetry and fiction, I often feel entrapped in a virtual geography connecting different times and spaces. Belén Gache s generous friendship and support, first from Buenos Aires and later from Madrid, has allowed me to understand the notion of place from a fantastic, sometimes even surreal perspective. I also owe Sylvia Iparraguirre a debt of gratitude for my interest in travel literature and shipwrecks. My understanding of the history of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego would be incomplete without her insights and her breadth of knowledge on the topic. Writing in a foreign language is a wondrous and, at times, mysterious experience. I owe special thanks to Loretta Godfrey, who helped me edit the entire manuscript and who carefully checked for proper format in references and bibliography. Her professionalism and generosity with her time made this adventure easier and more enjoyable. When a translation of the works in Spanish was not available, my colleague and friend, Cindy Schuster, was in charge of all the literary translations. The elegance, beauty, and precision of her translations made a unique contribution to this work. And finally, to Alan, who shares with me the joys and burdens of life. Without his loving help and support, I would not have been able to accomplish this task. And to Alejandro, born a year later than the initial ideas for this book. His joyous face, his happiness, and his innocence accompanied me as I saw him and this project grow.