Eroticism as Battle: the body in (at) poetry by women

Abstract

This article proposes a discussion on Brazilian and Portuguese poetics about the female body and the social conditions of women, produced during the decades of 1970 and 1980, through the works of authors like Maria Teresa Horta, Clarice Lispector, Ana Cristina Cesar, Luiza Neto Jorge, Adélia Prado and Olga Savary, amongst others. In a moment of social struggle against governmental and ideological repression, the emerging need for a socially disruptive speech becomes apparent (Foucault 2014), mostly one in which the female body is an active ruler and subject of the literary process, specially in erotic poetry. Through a comparative study involved with sense and presence effects of the literary pieces (Gumbrecht 2010), we bring an analysis upon the relationship between the new transgressive writings (Foucault 1963) made by women and the canon literature of the period, in agreement with Derrida’s (1986) thoughts and in compliance with the feminist speech. It’s noticeable that the fight for material freedom of the female body can be achieved in - and by means of - the poetic speech, in a literary movement that persists in female written poetry and prose until this day.