Literary Word as a Weapon in Luisa Valenzuela

This article examines the narrative of resistance that Argentinian writer Luisa Valenzuela performs in order to discuss various forms of domination. By using some literary techniques, Valenzuela approaches, in a critical and strictly fictional way, both the political domination held by military dictatorship (1976-1983) in her country and sexual domination that historically can be observed in Argentinian society. In order to stand up against the monopolization of speech, she emphasizes the plurality of voices. In order to defy the suppression of marginalized minorities, her stories put under the spotlight the same individual that the military government and the sexist society would rather ignore and neutralize - women above all. Conscious of the destabilizing power of writing, Valenzuela uses the literary language as a weapon (as she would call it herself), as lethal and manageable as the poison of the toads that one of her characters spits out every time she speaks.