The Proper Name as a Modulator of sexual, Affective and Genealogical Ties in the Novels of Armonía Somers: a Poetics of Nominal Supplementarity

• Main Author: Ulla Szaszak Bongartz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University Library System, University of Pittsburgh 2021-01-01
• Series: Catedral Tomada: Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana
• Subjects: literatura uruguaya; armonía somers; subjetividades literarias; nombres propios; identidad
• Online Access: http://catedraltomada.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/catedraltomada/article/view/453

This article explore the potential of the proper name as a contingent identity modulator in the Uruguayan author Armonía Somers’ novels, and, specifically, of nominal supplementarity (the act of twisting, overprinting, displacing or substituting sometimes momentarily the "original" or "legal" name of the characters for another(s), as a form of nominal drift). This operation is presented as a producer of subjective transformations of the characters, as verified in certain areas of Latin American literary discourse in the 20th century. Among these are three novels by Somers: The naked woman (1950), Sólo los elefantes encuentran mandrágora (1986) and Viaje al corazón del día: elegía por un secreto amor (1986), which participate in this nominal poetics. In these texts, the nominal displacements cause the reconfiguration or even an inauguration of new forms of relationship between the characters. So the use of this thematic, structural, and subjective resource exceeds the mere change of nomenclature and reveals itself as a pole of subjective and intersubjective production.