Invention, Inversion, and Simulation. The Sexual Difference in Onetti, Donoso, and Puig

Abstract

This work compares the narrative strategies of transgression in three South American novels of the second half of the 20th century written respectively by Onetti, Donoso and Puig. Looking at the sexual difference, these strategies will be analyzed through the elements of the story (characters, action) and discourse (metaliterary techniques, discordance between gender and noun, non-learned literary forms). Thus, the invention of realities in Onetti, the inversion of the sexual in Donoso and the simulation of the popular in Puig will be appreciated as forms of transgression verbalized and employed by the dimension of the sexual, be it at the level of the characters, at the narrative level, or at both levels. It will be concluded that the perspective of sexual difference, beyond the claim of a particular (a)sexed identity, serves as a discursive form of resistance against capitalist heteropatriarchal language and norms. More than half a century after their publication, in the midst of the 21st century, the reading of these novels shows the relevance they have today on the question of gender, and more broadly, the sociopolitical in literature.