Writing, Body, and Voice in Puga’s Diary of Pain

Abstract

This paper analyzes the construction of an embodied subject in María Luisa Puga’s Diary of Pain. Having as a benchmark psychoanalytical theories, it is noticed that the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis caused in Puga a feeling of dispossession of the body, which is reinforced when she finds difficult to communicate or express her suffering. Focusing on the process of writing, it is shown that while in the first entries Puga depicts herself as a passive and silent character, such conception changes as she continues writing about her experience of pain. At the end of the book, Puga represents herself not only as a writer in pain, but of pain. The aim is to demonstrate that, in Diary of Pain, although the feeling of dispossession leads to an explicit figuration of a disembodied subject, María Luisa Puga does embody her writing through her own literary voice.