The uncontrollable female body. Modern figures in La Plata´s one-character play «Bajo un sol de sílice»

Abstract

This work seeks to problematize the discursive constructions around «woman» produced in and by the one-character play Bajo un sol de sílice, presented at the “Woman's Festival” of La Plata´s Municipal Comedy in 2017. To this end, it is postulated that it is necessary to dismantle the configurations of power that are hidden in the illusory understanding that being a «woman» is an a priori fact, relative to a certain genitality or anatomy. To do this, we start by defining theater as an event that brings worlds into existence (Dubatti, 2011) that maintain a relationship of tension with their field of referentiality and that are always gendered (Richard, 2009). It is assumed, then, that theatrical practice reifies reality and (re)produces naturalized assumptions regarding «woman». Through the analysis of the political poetic operations that the play proposes, it is concluded that the modern figure of the “uncontrollable female body gives coherence to the search for male power” (Masiello, 1997, p. 122) and functions as a naturalistic metaphor of the political fact of women´s domination.