Self-loving in the epidemic years: Carmen Machado’s rhetoric of woundedness

Abstract

This article explores Carmen Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties (2017) as articulating generative unmaking of bodies. Mobilizing that which I examine as rhetoric of woundedness, a thread of Latina rhetoric wherein wounds are strategically positioned to emphasize flesh as space of conflict, Machado writes body horrors to provoke dis-ease in audiences. Specifically, Machado highlights pervasive discursive discomforts that decentralize narratives about women’s body (un)wellness. It is important to note, however, that Machado’s attention to the corporal becomes, in part, rejection of body, a de-composition of physicality—sometimes reached through sexual ecstasy, other times through violence and epidemics—to re-compose self. Such a tactic recalls conversations advanced in Cherríe Moraga’s writings and Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano’s embodied theories, both included in Carla Trujillo’s landmark anthology, Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (1991). Moraga and Yarbro-Bejarano investigate textual dismemberment of female physique to re-imagine and reclaim body for enactments of Chicana desire. What marks Machado as distinct is her resistance to reclaim body. Often, Machado’s characters manifest phantom states that quarantine body from toxic physical and social spaces. Concurrently, characters lose rights to body due to self-hate within that toxicity. Machado’s characters find clarity only when freed from physicality, at which point they may re-compose themselves according to their testified truths. I see this distinction as a progression of works contained in Trujillo’s anthology as Machado envisions a worldmaking process that one composes through autonomous self-love and self-partnership to nurture female narrative and solidarity.

Keywords:

• Carmen Machado
• rhetoric
• Latinx
• wound theory
• decolonial

Disclosure of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Notes

1 I use the term Chicana to reference female-identifying United States citizens of Mexican descent. I contextualize my examination Moraga and Yarbro-Bejarano’s early works as prioritizing Chicana audiences and issues yet impacting Latina imaginaries, as expressed in Machado’s (2017) works. I use Latina to reference female-identifying United States citizens of Latin-American descent.

2 For “delinking,” see Mignolo (2011).

3 See Ramirez’s (2022) “Unmaking Colonial Fictions: Cherríe Moraga’s Rhetorics of Fragmentation and Semi-ness.

4 See Weheliye’s (2014), Habeas Viscus.

5 See Weheliye’s (2019) “Black Life/Schwarz-Sein.”

6 See Hood (2020), pp. 994-995.

7 See Hood (2020), pp. 989.

8 See Rapoport (2020), p. 632.

9 See Ganzevoort (2008) “Scars and Stigmata.”

10 See Campbell’s discussion on Judith Butler’s performativity theories, pp. 312-313.

11 See Vazquez and Vazquez’s (1996) The Maria Paradox.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Loretta Victoria Ramirez

Loretta V. Ramirez is Assistant Professor of Latinx Rhetoric and Composition at California State University, Long Beach in the Chicano and Latino Studies Department. Her research explores historical textual and visual rhetorics, emphasizing Latina writing, decolonial theory, and composition pedagogy. Loretta is recipient of a 2020 Scholars for the Dream Award, conferred by the Conference on College Composition & Communication. She has been published in Rhetoric Review and Composition Studies. Loretta’s monograph, The Wound and the Stitch: Chicana Rhetorics from Medieval Iberia to SoCal Art and Life is forthcoming, Spring 2024 (Penn State University Press). Loretta invites questions, comments, and discussions at [email protected].