Lists and Disaster Writing in Sanguínea, by Gabriela Ponce Padilla

Abstract

In Sanguínea (2019), her first novel, the Ecuadorian author Gabriela Ponce Padilla shows the disintegration of a woman’s emotional universe and her attachment to the erotic pulses that rule her life as she undergoes a process of separation. These trigger a flow of profound reflections and an acceptance of the lack of definitive certainties, as well as the impossibility of having pain culminate or desire drift. This register of what is always happening, of that which does not cease, inscribes itself in what Maurice Blanchot called “the disaster”, that which “ruins everything and at the same time leaves everything as it is”. Embodying the imminence of disaster —which, following the French philosopher, never ensues— is the most important work of the protagonist of this novel and leads to literary registers that oppose narration as untouched and categorical with respect to reality or the truth. The list is one of these registers, perhaps the one that Ponce privileges over others, and the one that most clearly confronts us with the absence of narration.