Words of Company. The Poetic Writing in the Proximity to Affliction in 136 Suite and Cleofé

Abstract

The paper devotes itself to the poetry books Cleofé by María Teresa Andruetto and 136 Suite by Virna Teixeira in order to ponder on the experimental possibilities of words in the company of psychic affliction or the experience of madness. As it sets the reading of both texts before open questions and trajectories of the Literary Studies as well as amidst social debate concerning the expectations and threats lodged inside those links of care in the family or the hospital, the work examines how writing operates on and next to the voice of others. It meets diverging procedures of differentiation and de-differentiation of the voices as different ethical gestures, through which words allow for the scansion, building, critique and modulation of diverse forms of company, which tense diverse forms of power (psychiatric, colonial, patriarchal). Hospitality to the words of others decides the suspension of domination and exploitation, including literary appropriation of madness as ornamental value, a danger not only upon poetic o fictional writing, but also upon the very critical-theoretical discourse.