La Amenaza y el Fantasma: La madre como representación fragmentaria en Melancolía y Manifestaciones de Lola Arias

Abstract

In this review, we will analyze the particularities of the representation of the mother by her daughter in the play "Melancolía y Manifestaciones" by Lola Arias.

According to Cixoux (2006), the manifestation of the mother is a dynamic process of representation, while for Barthes (1990), it is a form of condensation and perpetuation of the mother over time. Lola Arias operates within the tension between these two perspectives, creating a mosaic from which the memory of the mother is diffuse and fragmentary, but also dynamic and related to aspects such as pain, loss, and illness.

The writing that gives rise to the representation of the mother is conceived as an explosion that simulates childbirth, the generation of an "other" body different from one's own but intimately linked to it. This is the relationship between the mother and the daughter, the point of maximum possible intimacy: when it is constructed through representation, through writing.

The daughter writes to make the mother present, to comfort herself with her presence and to try to fill the gap between one memory and another, but her presence also alarms her. The hereditary illness threatens her and makes her doubt whether the very need to evoke the mother, to represent her, is evidence that she too is suffering from the illness.