El cuerpo enfermo como potencia en Fruta podrida (2007) de Lina Meruane

Abstract

In the present article we propose to carry out a reading of the novel Fruta podrida (2007) by Lina Meruane that will focus on the character of Zoila in order to establish an inquiry about the power of the sick body as a way-of-life within a system that, under the imperative and promise of health, manifests itself in an intervention that separates body and person, and establishes an empire in which the obligation to make-live invades all areas of existence. A series of tensions converge in the character of Zoila that complicate the taxonomies on which the text is built (health/disease, productivity/unproductivity): she lives in the disease that is killing her; she multiplies and re-produces herself; in her apparent leisure, she works towards a goal; and, finally, she captures, through writing, the decomposition of her body. We do not mean by this that the disease represents some kind of liberation for Zoila, but we can affirm that it installs her in another field of power relations from which she, through a series of operations, manages to reposition herself.