La simetría de lo disimétrico. Elementos del discurso de la histérica en un cuento de Esther Tusquets

Abstract

Esther Tusquets (1936-2012) is a writer whose work has been known and recognized first of all because it relates, originally and symptomatically, to the shades of a female position within the patriarchal order. The present article’s aim is to analyze how the hysteric’s discourse (among the four discourse types established by Jacques Lacan the only one that conveys a possibility of transgression) is reproduced and overcome in the short story “The Subtle Laws ofSymmetry” (1982), almost unanimously proclaimed by the critics Tusquets’ most explicitly feminist (and optimistic) piece of narrative. As a partial opposition to such a predominant interpretation, a focus on a progressive identification with the symbolic mandate of the Other will be proposed and applied both to examine the text structure and the protagonists’ experience. Th e identification will be seen as what enables her to transgress the patriarchy but not necessarily to transit to a more “symmetric” state of things (and mind).