The beast within me: subject and language in the postanimality of Luz Pichel

Abstract

Identified in Castilian literature as one of the representatives of the “neorrural” poetry movement and in Galician literature as one of the practitioners of what has been called “posruralism”, which explores the disappearance of a world and a way of life related to rural culture, Luz Pichel’s body of work actually functions as a battering ram against both reception fields to which it belongs. It offers unforeseen meanings in line with an experimental program that links socio-political non-conformity to a questioning of language as a tool for representing the world. In this study, we aim to delve into the significance of the treatment of the animal trope in Pichel’s poetics. We observe her systematic rejection of the traditional anthropomorphization of the Other animal and the animalization of the human Other, indicating a desire to challenge the foundations of hierarchical oppositions that constitute the hegemonic view of the Western subject according to heterolingualism — the use of multiple languages, often in combination or contrast, within a literary or communicative context.