The deviant body in neo-Victorian literature: a somatechnical reading of the freak in Rosie Garland’s "The palace of curiosities" (2013)

Lin Elinor Pettersson

doi:10.18172/jes.2819

Autores/as

Lin Elinor Pettersson University of Malaga http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5426-5125

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.2819

Palabras clave:

Neo-victorianismo, cuerpo, "Freak Show", somatecnología, visión, subjetividad y corporalidad.

Resumen

Este trabajo se centra en la representación, transformación e interpretación del cuerpo aberrante en la literatura neo-victoriana a través de un cuidado análisis de la figura del freak en la novela The Palace of Curiosities (2013) de Rosie Garland. Tomando como punto de partida los argumentos de críticos como Bordo (1993), Grosz (1994), Sullivan y Murray (2014) sobre la dimensión constructivista del cuerpo humano, pretendo demostrar que el concepto de “somatecnología” ofrece una valiosa herramienta crítica para el análisis de la materialización de conceptos sociales a través de sistemas de control denominadas “tecnologías de poder” por Foucault (2003a). Con este objetivo en mente, el presente artículo investiga las dimensiones socio-culturales en la formación del freak a través de una exploración de la relación intrínseca entre la subjetividad y la corporalidad. En este contexto, Garland logra convertir un espacio explotador y deshumanizante como el freak show en un ámbito de independencia y autosuficiencia. El resultado de este estudio sugiere que The Palace of Curiosities sintetiza los aspectos vocales, visuales y autorreflexión de la literatura neo-victoriana a través de la noción del lector/observador.

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Biografía del autor/a

Lin Elinor Pettersson, University of Malaga

Lin Pettersson works at the Department of English, French and German at the University of Málaga where she teaches English literature and English for specific purposes. Her main areas of research are space, gender and neo-Victorian literature with a specific interest in the world of spectacle. She completed her PhD thesis “Neo-Victorian Novels of Spectacle: Mapping Gendered Spaces in the City” under the supervision of Dr Rosario Arias. Lin has been a visiting Junior Scholar at the University of Lund (Sweden). Lin has published a book on gender performance in neo-Victorian fiction as well as book chapters and articles on neo-Victorian literature. Among her most recent publications is a book chapter in Siân Adiseshiah y Rupert Hildyard’s edited volume Twenty-First Century Fiction: What Happens Now (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) entitled “‘The Private Rooms and Public Haunts’: Theatrical Acts and the City of London in Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White”, and an article on silence and lesbianism in Emma Donoghue’s The Sealed Letter (Lambda Nordica 2.2, 2013).

Citas

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