Looking and Touching Oneself, Looking and Touching, Being Looked at and Being Touched: Subversion of Binary Categories in A Mulher no Espelho, by Helena Parente Cunha and Las Ninfas a Veces Sonríen, by Ana Clavel

Abstract

Mulher no Espelho (HELENA PARENTE CUNHA 1985) and Las Ninfas a Veces Sonríen (ANA CLAVEL, 2013), are works that, despite having great thematic and formal differences, in addition to belonging to specific socio-historical contexts, contain significant affinities that allow a fruitful comparative reading. First, by the fact that both literary works fragment the narrative as well as the autobiographical subject, pillars of the autobiographical fiction, a literary subgenre which these novels simultaneously adopt and subvert. Secondly, for the central position episodes of autoeroticism occupy in both narratives, events which are either accompanied or preceded by self-contemplative scenes in front of the mirror, occurrences which I interpret as allegories of the fragmentation of the subject and the narrative form mentioned above. That said, in this work I argue that the perspective presented in the scenes of autoeroticism in front of the mirror is exemplary of the consequent duplication/multiplication of the subject and the narrative, contaminating the entire story and destabilizing not only a possible unique writing but also a unique reading, ending up also affecting the reader.