"Mirando por dentro": doubling, violence and identity in Cristina Rivera Garza's "La muerte me da"

• Autores: Gillian Price
• Localización: Chasqui: revista de literatura latinoamericana, ISSN 0145-8973, Vol. 47, Nº. 1, 2018, págs. 160-176
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • A prolific, award-winning writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short stories and, most recently, an opera, Cristina Rivera Garza won her second Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz award for La muerte me da (2007), a novel that initially appears to be a traditional whodunit. The reader soon discovers, however, that it by no means follows the typical trajectory of the detective story, but rather subverts many of its conventions, perhaps most notably the development, or the lack thereof, of the criminal investigation itself. The investigator who has no proper name but is simply called "la Detective," works alongside an informant-the author's alter ego who is also named Cristina Rivera Garza. In lieu of a thorough investigation into the multiple murders, the search at the center of the novel is one of self-discovery, which is not limited to the characters in the novel, but rather represents a universal quest, as suggested by the characters' anonymity. Using Lacanian theory that establishes the importance of language in mediating knowledge of the self, I will argue that the focus we see on language in Rivera Garza's novel both affirms and problematizes identity. La Detective and Cristina find that despite their initial assurance that they are unique and dissimilar individuals, they are, in fact, doubles of each other. Moreover, both women perceive a darker unconscious side of themselves that also links them to the killer. Finally, in the repeated emphasis upon shifting gender and gender roles, Rivera Garza insists upon the instability of identity. Through the individuals' perception of their doubles and the ambiguous nature of gender, Rivera Garza suggests an inherent futility in the drive to find oneself. I will argue that Jacques Lacan's concepts of jouissance, symbolic castration in language, and language's role in the formation of identity constitute the organizing critical discourse at the center of Rivera Garza's La muerte.