Male Subjectivity and Gender Relations in Juan Carlos Onetti's "El pozo"

This reading of Juan Carlos Onetti's El pozo focuses on the process of construction of the subject and on the representation of gender relations. Subjectivity, in El pozo, is a gendered male subjectivity; female characters are constituted as other in relation to the male subject I explore the complex interrelatedness between patriarchal social/discursive formations?that is, gender relations that are based on the Hegelian master-slave dialectic? and Eladio Linacero's male fantasies; in fact,the boundaries between subjective and objective realities, and between fantasy and the outer world, overlap in the novel The limits or borders between these realms of existence are by no means fixed nor absolute frontiers; instead, they are continually being erased and redrawn in a dynamic process that corresponds to the complexity of the subject's experiences. From the enclosed space of his room, Eladio Linacero writes his memoirs on the eve of his fortieth birthday. He probes his past, dwelling on his repeated failures with respect to his intimate and social relations. The egocentric protagonist of this text is incapable of positing women as autonomous subjects. Instead, they function psychologically for Linacero as vehicles for self-exploration. Although the protagonist of El pozo is a prime example of the modern existentialist subject, the novel's emphasis on his fantasies and dreams makes the existentialist model of 44

Epistemology · Gender relations · Humanities · Sociology · Subjectivity · Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism · Gender Studies · Latin American Literature Analysis · Latin American Literature Studies · Philosophy