Finger-pointing (Painting) in Neuter: The Deixis of Portraiture in the Third-person Lyric of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (original) (raw)

2017

 Abstract The figurative pointing and painting in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's poetry create unique intersections of voice, person and gender whence lyric in the neuter or third person may speak. This paper follows her use of deixis (from the epideictic tradition), the gesture of pointing at and describing a person or an object, as a way to trace her subjectivity to the point of origin for the invective or praise, while exploring her navigation of the third and first persons within that tradition. Though the lyric traditionally operates on the first-person/ second-person dialectic, Sor Juana's productive use of the epideictic in her lyric poems opens a space for the neuter, or ternary logic, in a genre dominated by male subjectivity.

The Self as a Linguistic Event: Discourse Functions in the Poetry of Fernando Pessoa

Fernando Pessoa has several fictional characters who are claimed to be the authors of various collections of poetry gathered under his name. In the criticism, these are often seen as figures substituted for himself, while the poems which are not attributed to any of these fictional characters are treated as his own direct speech actions without subterfuge. This is in line with the conventions that have been dominant in discussions of literature, either to start from the author or from what Edward Said calls the ‘social and economic outside facts’. With attention turned elsewhere, the literary work itself tends to figure as an instrument in the hands of the author for use in pursuing some purpose. In this paper, we are going to bring back the works into focus. Discourse analysis is helpful in doing this. It is also applied in this paper to help sharpen focus on the characters of discourse, their identities as discourse agents and the objects which exercise them, in order to achieve interpretation of the poems as discourse events.

The Personal is Linguistic. Personal Pronouns in the Art of Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca

Public Art Dialogue, 2023

Personal pronouns occur repeatedly in the works of Italian artists Mirella Bentivoglio and Ketty La Rocca. Both artists were significantly shaped by visual poetry in the late 1960s and continued their exploration of language in the visual arts throughout the 1970s. Notably, their engagement with personal pronouns centered the first person singular (I). As the key site of subject-constitution in language, this linguistic category is crucial to a great number of early feminist writings. In recourse to these writings, I argue that Bentivoglio and La Rocca negotiate the personal pronoun “I” as a predetermined linguistic category and make use of it to introduce alterity into the constitution of the gendered subject. They do so by engaging with public signs. Considering the works of these artists as cornerstones of a feminist critique of language in the visual arts, the paper explores the critical potential of personal pronouns for this very critique.

The Intersubjective Ethic of Julieta Paredes’ Poetic

Bolivian Studies Journal/Revista de Estudios Bolivianos, 2010

This paper explores the ways in which the feminist activist group Mujeres Creando’s contemporary urban street performances and Julieta Paredes‘ poetry catalyze discussions around intersubjective ethics in the Andes. First, I discuss subjectivity as suspended in the inextricable space between embodiment and textuality, between the physical attributes of breathing bodies and the subsequent categorization of them in language and texts. Second, I argue that Mujeres Creando's and Paredes’ emphasis on the body as a site of active resistance to social norms contributes to the creation of what Emmanuel Levinas calls a “living poetic.“ This living, embodied poetic is less about producing a frozen…

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