Is the text a body and the body, a text? : Self-representation and feminist stances in Marta Sanz

Abstract

In this article we propose a review of the main strategies of self-representation of the Spanish author Marta Sanz, deployed both in her journalistic articles and essays and in her autobiographical novels. Sanz does not hesitate to defend an uncomfortable literature that provokes an agitation in her readers, a critical reaction, so that in her texts she claims a position in which to give visibility to some subjects that have been undervalued and excluded from the literary tradition, since they were considered intimate subjects and, therefore, not universal. The gaze with which Sanz drills reality is crossed by her feminist activism, as it is impossible for her not to claim a gender perspective. In her works we witness the exhibition of her self-portrait, a work for which she demands her position as a subject who chooses to show herself to others, in a way that subverts the male fetishist gaze. Not only will she succeed in affirming herself as a woman and author through her texts, but she will also maintain herself in a perpetual struggle against the stereotypical representation of violence against women in literature. The author manages to make the text, a body, a real corpus in which, as a mirror, pain, emotion, and obscenity are channeled. A discourse that is embodied to say with authenticity everything that historically has been silenced.