In:Discourses on the Edges of Life
Edited by Vicent Salvador †, Adéla Kotátková and Ignasi Clemente
[IVITRA Research in Linguistics and Literature 26] 2020
► pp. 147–166
Memory, mothers and post-Freudian melancholia in Mercè Rodoreda’s ‘Night and Fog’
Published online: 9 April 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.26.10lun
https://doi.org/10.1075/ivitra.26.10lun
Abstract
This chapter explores the relationship between
post-Freudian melancholia, memory and mothers in the short story
“Nit i boira” [“Night and Fog”] (1947) by Mercè Rodoreda. I relate
the story to the concept of “desnéixer” from Maria-Mercè Marçal’s
Raó del cos [The Body’s
Reason] (2000).
Both texts articulate the (im)possible task of freeing the maternal
from controversial approaches to it such as that of classical
psychoanalysis which determines the patriarchal rupture of the
alleged plenitude of pre-Oedipal mother-child bond, or from the
effects of a Western culture that, as Luce Irigaray claims, “repose
sur le meurtre de la mère.” Alison Landsberg’s and Michael
Rothberg’s views on memory help to read Rodoreda’s story, in which
affection and loss are inevitably intertwined with history and
politics.
Article outline
- Maria-Mercè Marçal’s concept of “desnéixer”
- Mercè Rodoreda’s “Night and Fog”
Notes References
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