How to name the unnamable. An analysis of the body metaphor in the poetry of Violeta Barrientos

Abstract

 In this paper, the writing about the invisible desire proposed by the collection of poems El innombrable cuerpo del deseo, published in 1992 by the Peruvian poet Violeta Barrientos Silva, will be studied. Through the metaphor of the body, the poetic voice confronts the heterosexual matrix, transforming the body into a space where the hegemonic desire can be disarticulated, by making possible a series of resistances that allows us to think of a homoerotic poetics. The collection of poems begins with the metaphor of the body linked to a desire, where the body is put before reason; then, it presents us with the impossibility of representing homoerotic desire within a heteronormative framework; subsequently, we evidence a struggle for the representation of a homoerotic voice, which will finally become evident in the very transgression of the gender configuration. To develop this proposal, we will rely on the concepts of rhetoric and gender studies, specifically, the metaphor (Stefano Arduini, and George Lakoff and Mark Johnson), the body and performativity (Judith Butler) and homoeroticism (Andrés Santana). Thus we will focus on the poems that allow us to answer questions about the body and the construction of a discourse of homoerotic resistance.