"A Crude Clay Figurine": The Figuration of Alejandra Pizarnik

Abstract

The article explores the Pizamik performance as a construction as calculated and refined as any of the Argentinian writer's texts. Drawing on shared experiences and unpublished material, the author explores how Alejandra Pizarnik used her body and her words to articulate a figure that appeals to and seeks out the gaze of the other, aware that there is no figure at all without the other, that is, there is no "I". The article also
views Pizarnik's excessive, even dissonant, humor as a sort of alternative laboratory, one dedicated to destabilizing and transgressive experimentation. The unhinged and even vulgar character of these experiments constitute a fundamental part of both her work and figuration as a writer.