| Politics of the Body in Luisa Valenzuela's "Cambio de armas" and "Simetrías" The military first threw our children into the river alive, their feet trapped inside a bucket of cement. . . . But the corpses began to wash ashore, so they decided to start dumping them in the open ocean.1 -- Hebe Bonafini
By GWENDOLYN DÍAZ At the heart of Luisa Valenzuela's narrative is a deep preoccupation with the use of power, the abuse of power, and the structures of domination which permeate the most basic aspects of our existence. These structures of domination are based on the struggle implied in the idea of politics. What is meant here by politics is the competition between diverse interest groups for power, leadership, and the allocation of value. These structures of domination surface in the politics of the body, the politics of sexuality, the politics of language, and the politics of the state, particularly the authoritarian state. The narrative of Luisa Valenzuela skillfully portrays the interdependence between each of these levels of political exchange and underscores the serious problems embedded in structures of domination and their repercussion from one level of our existence into others. Valenzuela two stories "Cambio de armas" ( 1982 ) and "Simetrías" ( 1993 ) explore the relationship between body, language, and power, as well as the coercive structures that privilege one gender, social order, or political view over another. Both of the stories, which deal with the plight of female torture victims, take place in Argentina during the period of military dictatorship called the "Dirty War" (1976-83), a period that was euphemistically referred to by the government as the "Proceso de reorganización nacional" (Process of National Reorganization). At this time all civil rights were suspended, and the military dictatorship had free rein to seize anyone suspected of being a subversive. This period of extreme military repression began with the coup of General Jorge Videla, whose main target was the urban guerrillas and leftist organizations responsible for terrorism. However, of the estimated six thousand to twenty thousand desaparecidos or "disappeared" victims, relatively few were actually terrorists. ( Lewis, 449). In these two stories the author not only analyzes the repression, subjugation, and violence exerted by the totalitarian regime on its victims, but also shows that this same repression is embedded in the culture through its perceptions of body and gender differences, as well as evident in the language which structures the social order. Therefore, parallel to the study of the literature, this analysis reviews an evolution of the concept of dominance and subjugation that underlies human relations and is reflected in fiction. In doing so, it briefly focuses on common denominators in the views of G. W. F. Hegel, Jacques Lacan, and Michel Foucault, who offer valuable insight into the psychological, social, and political variables that structure society according to a system of power relationships. Hegel shapes his view of human relations in terms of the master-andslave dichotomy explained in his Phenomenology of the Mind (217-27). The master/slave dialectic suggests that a subject is only conscious of itself when it has before it another consciousness. At this time it comes outside itself and finds itself in the other being. What it wants is the recognition of the other. The two subjects then must prove themselves in what Hegel calls a struggle for life and death in which they risk their life to obtain freedom in the form of the truth of their own being. The outcome of this struggle results in a subject that exists for itself, the master, and a subject that is dependent on the other, the slave. Lacan, who studied Hegel, views the master/slave dialectic as a rationale for the way in which subjects constitute their gender identity. His reading of the dialectic places the emphasis on desire not so much for recognition, but desire for that which is lacking, which he calls the "object a" or missing object ( "Desire,"15-16). What is crucial in Lacan's account of the formation of sexuality is that woman is construed as the one who is lacking. The most obvious lack is that of the male organ (as pointed out by Freud). Lacan explains that what the organ represents is the abstract concept of phallus, which he defines as language, authority, and power. Hence, he suggests, society is structured around a valoriza- GWENDOLYN DÍAZ is Associate Professor of Spanish at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.
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