Giovanna Rivero: Thinking with the Terrible Young Girl and Fragmentation in new South American Narrative

Abstract

The author begins by challenging the conventional perception of “the young girl” as a social and historical subject, from a perspective that invites us to “listen to her talk” and to “think with her”. From here, and from the practice of a “desiring theory” (that does not capture identities but casts becomings), the article analyzes various emblematic narratives to appreciate the “anti-oedipal tessitura” of the young girls who appear as their protagonists: the protagonist of Jorge Luis Borges’ famous short story, “Emma Zunz”, certain fables and prose poems by Marosa di Giorgio, the novel “Papi” (2005), by Rita Indiana, author of what she calls the “Trilogy of Unbearable Girls”. Special attention is brought to, 98 segundos sin sombra (2016), a novel by the Bolivian author Giovanna Rivero, which presents not so much the writer as a young girl, but the young girl as a writer, as well as some of her writings from the book of short stories Para comerte mejor (2016). The desiring theory produced by Giovanna Rivero and her characters does not lead to certainties but to growing uncertainties. Her stories are among the most suggestive and mysterious when it comes to women protagonists in Latin American literature.