Prenatal and posthumous: Powerless writings in Inventions of remembrance of Sivina Ocampo

Abstract

Inventions of remembrance, of Silvina Ocampo, is part of the author’s posthumous corpus. In 2006, Sudamericana published this work under the care of Ernesto Montequin, which has been considered an autobiographical text.

This paper intends to point out that Inventions of remembrance is not an autobiographical work but a text that exposes scriptural impotence from the expression «prenatal» that opens an arc to the posthumous construction that also culminates in the form of impotence. Following the reading that Giorgio Agamben makes of this notion in Aristotle as the capacity of deprivation, of not moving into the act, of suspending oneself in possibility and resisting the totalizing realization of a certain way, this reading finds that Inventions of remembrance moves in zones of potency where the Subject who would come to narrate a past life —autobiography— dissolves to account for an unforeseen composition with «what has been» (Heidegger) and where «invention», «instinct», «childhood» , the posthumous and the edition affect it.

To develop these hypotheses, we will divide the work into seven sections that analyze and decompose the notion of «prenatal» into nuances that Ocampo presents until he bequeaths his relationship with the posthumous nature of this writing.