Abjection and Ambiguity as Responses to Phallogocentrism in "Cambio De Armas" by Luisa Valenzuela

Abstract

In 1982, during her exile in the United States due to the Argentine military dictatorship, Luisa Valenzuela published "Cambio de armas" (Change of Weapons), a collection of short stories that revolves around the violence that unleashed the so-called National Reorganization Process in the Southern Cone country. All starring women, these five stories recreate the female experience of the Dirty War and explore the relationship between men and women through the power plays expressed in the body and language. Such is the case with "Cambio de armas" (Change of Weapons), the story that gives the collection its title and on which I focus my analysis based on Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection. While several works with this approach already exist, they primarily focus on the study of abjection through the diegesis, neglecting other dimensions of the text. Here, I return to Kristeva's theory, this time also as a key to interpreting its linguistic construction. I propose that abjection in the story, while present in the diegesis, is linguistically constructed through the generation of ambiguity as a reflection of the "absolute zero" in which Laura finds herself. Ultimately, this ambiguous writing allows Valenzuela to rebel against the canon not only through what is represented, but also through the way it is represented, breaking with the notion of truth, certainty, and uniqueness that characterizes phallogocentric rationality.