THE EMBODIED ARITHMETIC OF GUADALUPE NETTEL’S EL CUERPO EN QUE NACÍ

Abstract

The Body Where I was Born (2011) by Guadalupe Nettel is an autofictional Bildungsroman which provokes questions about body, mind, and selfhood. The preposition of the title, and criticism of the work, seems to imply a Cartesian Dualism, in which the body is merely a vessel or space in which one’s mind is contingently housed. Yet the narrative itself dissolves this implicit mind/body separation, locating the self not simply in the body, but as the body. The protagonist of the novel is born with a defective eye. This limitation on her perceptual faculties means only able to use half of her sight, creating a motif which splices the novel. The world that she sees, and the lens of focalization through which the narrative is revealed, is divided into halves: this is how the character experiences and conceptualizes the world, and indeed her self. To compensate for this sense being half-formed, incomplete (not quite an individual), she forms her subjectivity through doublings, fashioning her identity on those beings with whom she can connect, imitating those creatures which she feels are more truly ‘like her’: insects, outcasts, creatures living on the margin. Mirroring these creatures gives her a sense of solidity in a fragmented world: two halves make a whole. This balance is not, of course, a mathematical one, but an affective and embodied experience. Reading the novel through this lens helps us to re-think its insights on mind, body, and the connections between them.