Putting reality in parentheses: Representation of the maternal function in El Dock (1993) by Matilde Sánchez and La casa operativa (2007) by Cristina Feijóo

Abstract

In this paper we analyse two novels published in the Argentinean «post-dictatorship» period: El Dock by Matilde Sánchez (1993) and La casa operativa by Cristina Feijóo (2007). We focus our reading on the dissimilar representation of maternal roles and the reconfiguration of filial bonds in the novels through their narrators. In the context of the re-readings undertaken during the 1990s of the revolutionary process in Argentina, opened in 1969 and aborted in blood and fire by the last civil-military dictatorship, of a revision and re-evaluation of the culture of those years, of the interpersonal relationships established in the political and guerrilla organisations and, in the context of the appearance of new victims and witnesses such as the sons and daughters of the disappeared, these novels focus on aspects considered «private» or «intimate» which, as we shall see, are not so private. They aim to re-discuss the complexity of the maternal function intersected by politics: two mothers who are no longer there or who are absent (dead or disappeared) are evoked positively or negatively by their two orphaned children, and a (third) mother begins to be one, while debating whether she should be.