Cartography of the city: The subversive house in Naciste Pintada by Carmen Berenguer

Abstract

Carmen Berenguer’s writing is shaped by two fundamentals questions: What is the place of literature? And if I’m a woman, who am I? Thus, the discursive hybridism contemplated in Naciste Pintada is part of a new urban articulation from a female poet’s vision living in a fragmented world. The city described in this novel is neobaroque, maked-up and essentially disguised. The home, immanent and feminine, place of woman’s specula(risa)tion, becomes public, and denatures the hegemonic discourse of the city, transcendent and masculine. The lost of its private characteristic subverts the house’s imaginary and implies social changes. In Naciste Pintada, we perceive two women’s discourses inserted in two specifics cities: the first one is poetic (Valparaiso, the lost center of the poet), and the other is colloquial (Santiago, her
habitat). The house, metonymic trope, suggests another significant map of the city, and establishes the woman aterritoriality in the post-modern world.