by Magela Baudoin, PhD Candidate, Department of Romance Languages
Women’s autobiographical writing has historically faced devaluation within the realm of so-called “high” literature (Huyssen 2006). This marginalization stems from several factors: firstly, the misguided association of “literary” with “fiction,” which tends to discredit narratives perceived as not purely imaginative (Lejeune 1989; Molloy 1996); secondly, entrenched paradigms in modern Western thought that dichotomize emotion from reason, thereby relegating the “sentimental” to a pejorative category (Ahmed 2015; Labanyi 2021; Caputo 2017); and thirdly, prejudices that autobiographical writings lack the capacity for political or aesthetic reflection, especially if produced by women.
My dissertation proposes the concept of “writings in multitude” (escrituras en muchedumbre) based on the analysis of three unprecedented autobiographical writings in Latin American literature: those of Carolina María de Jesús (Brazil), Matilde Casazola (Bolivia), and Cristina Rivera Garza (Mexico). These writers break categorical definitions of genre/gender (literary and sexual) and challenge prejudices surrounding women’s writings as spaces of only “emotion” rather than thought. They generate new aesthetic avenues where ethics and politics converge to bear witness to creative challenges and emancipatory tensions of women in their respective contexts and historical moments, from the mid-20th century to the present in the 21st century.
“Writings in multitude” are paradoxical in their collective and polyphonic nature emerging from individual autobiographical voices. They resist being purely individual, thus questioning the canonical idea of authorship rooted in a patriarchal tradition. These works also challenge notions of originality through the concept of “creative bastardism,” treating the text as a dynamic, performative entity. Consequently, “writings in multitude” tend to be hybrid, palimpsestic texts interwoven with quotations, blending different genres, and infused with poetic, political, philosophical, and profane elements. They invite readers to actively engage in a communal experience with the text and its voices, creating spaces for intervention.
With the support of CSWS, I approached the autobiographical work of Cristina Rivera Garza since it is writing in multitude that resides in the bastardism proposed by María Galindo (whom I not only studied but was able to interview in Mexico). This bastardism disrupts the conventional boundaries of genre and tradition in multiple ways. In this chapter, I analyze Liliana’s Invincible Summer (Rivera Garza 2021), a book that the author dedicates to her sister murdered at the hands of her partner and in which she reflects on the maximum expression of patriarchal violence: femicide.
María Galindo (2021) defines “bastard consciousness” as a diverse realm of thought and action, challenging essentialist constructs of identity such as gender, family, and nation. Galindo advocates for rejecting ancestral and colonial prejudices to embrace a “pariah existence,” promoting a self-awareness that celebrates diversity without reducing it to “pure origins” (41, 49). Rivera Garza embodies this open approach to art and culture, crafting a language of emotions that defies hegemonic discourse and denounces patriarchal violence.
Liliana’s Invincible Summer is a performative, collective, and bastard autobiographical artifact, establishing a new literary form. Supported by the CSWS Graduate Writing Completion Fellowship, my research demonstrates how this “writing in multitude” achieves aesthetic innovation and political impact by dismantling prejudices against autobiographical literature, particularly when authored by women. Moreover, our author’s work avoids symbolic exploitation and simplistic narratives of victimhood, instead advocating for justice and a deep understanding of power dynamics.
Rivera Garza not only co-authors this narrative using the archives of her sister Liliana, recovering her voice and agency, but she also interviews witnesses, friends, and victims of violence, with whom she “agrees” on a “documentary writing,” or more precisely, “a critical fabulation” (Rivera Garza 2022; Hartman, s. f.). She utilizes both physical archives and the archives of imagination, equally. Thus, this autobiographical story is a vigorous creative and conceptual experiment, where resistance occurs. She also produces a surprising poetic language of emotions that refuses the exacerbation of the “wound,” the symbolic exploitation of the victim, or the Manichean operation of “giving voice” to the voiceless. Instead, she opts for a renewed form, whose greater aim is the pursuit of justice (Rivera Garza 2022, 14–24).
As if this were not enough, responding to the closure of the present produced by violence, the author provokes the restitution of life in the text and in the imagination; that is, she makes a cleft in time through the formulation of a uchronian window—What if death is not the final destiny of a body suppressed from life by violence?—whose purpose is to configure an alternative present, in which the reader and the multitude of voices that inhabit the text actively participate to weave resistance.
My dissertation is significant because it expands the understanding of “writings in multitude.” These writings act as open aesthetic and philosophical laboratories where women make their genealogies and the legacies of other women visible in both historical and contemporary contexts. This process establishes artistic identity as a heterogeneous and complex system. Through their innovative approaches, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Matilde Casazola, and Cristina Rivera Garza destabilize conventional methods of reading contemporary Latin American literature, disrupting the established canon and paving the way for more inclusive and diverse understandings of literature and authorship.
—Magela Baudoin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Romance Languages. She received a CSWS Graduate Writing Completion Fellowship for this project.
References
Ahmed, Sarah. 2015. La política cultiural de las emociones. Primera edición. México: Universidad Autónoma de México.
Caputo, Giuseppe. 2017. «“Sentimental”». En . Universidad Diego Portales: Revista Dossier. https://revistadossier.udp.cl/dossier/sentimental/.
Galindo, María. 2021. Feminismo bastardo. La Paz (Bolivia): Mujeres Creando.
Hartman, Saidiya. s. f. «Venus en Dos Actos». Institutional. Hemispheric Institute. https://hemisphericinstitute.org/es/emisferica-91/9-1-essays/e91-essay-venus-en-dos-actos.html. tgv
Huyssen, A. 2006. Después de la gran división. Modernismo, cultura de masas, postmodernismo. Argentina: Adriana Hidalgo.
Labanyi, Jo. 2021. «Pensar lo material». Kamchatka: revista de análisis cultural, 2021.
Lejeune, Philippe. 1989. On Autobiography. Ed. Paul John Eakin. Trad. Katherine Leary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Molloy, Silvia. 1996. Acto de presencia: La escritura autobiográfica en Hispanoamérica. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica; El colegio de México, 1996. Trad. de José Esteban Calderón. Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica; El colegio de México.
Rivera Garza, Cristina. 2021. El invencible verano de Liliana. Primera Edicieon. Bolivia: Mantis.
---. 2022. Escrituras geológicas. Vol. 14. La Crítica Practicante. Ensayos latinoamericanos. Frankfurt, Madrid: Iberoamericana.