Jean-Paul Sartre said that hell is others. The poet Ángeles Mora discussed the premise of the French existentialist, ensuring that hell, far from being the other, is in us. Poetry, at least that which wants to fight against the unconscious that produces it, must delve into the interior of the individual to find there the hell that constitutes us, the other that inhabits us.
It is no coincidence that so many split subjects appear in poetry – or crossed out or barred, we would say. to the Lacan–: poetic subjects who unfold themselves to dialogue with that other that lives inside him and prevents him from saying I amto present itself as a full and autonomous subjectivity. The intimacy of the snakeby Luis García Montero (2003), opens with a poem titled Quarantine, which stages a dialogue between a poet who has reached maturity when he turns forty years old and the young man who was, at twenty years old, militant and committed, who impertinently looks at him from the photograph and sanctions him for giving up his dreams for mere survival. , the replacement of the exclamation of protest by the question of doubt, the exchange of the heart for reason. In the conversation, impostures and betrayals are reproached. The presence of that other who inhabits him generates discomfort in a subject who, however, cannot get rid of it. She has no choice but to live with him. In the enlightened way, instead of fighting a duel with the enemy within, they begin a negotiation to reach consensus and achieve peaceful coexistence.
In brothel, published in Contradictions, birds (2001), Ángeles Mora also unfolds. The poet looks at herself from the outside and discovers that her poetry has been written by another. Dictated by his patriarchal unconscious, his verses dialogued with the great names of universal literature, “almost always men,” who met in the paratexts. If Walter Benjamin spoke, in his Thesis on historyof the brothel of historicism to refer to the way in which the dominant classes went to history to empty it, violate it and make it say what legitimized their position in power, Mora describes in this poem the operation of a literary brothel, that “house of quotes” in which a literary history is configured solely composed of men of prestige who displace or overshadow other stories written from outside the prestigious places of the institution of literature. Unlike what happens in Quarantine, in Whorehouse The self does not want to reach any agreement with the other from the past, it wants to extirpate it, establish a rupture in its unconscious so that, from that fissure, it can perhaps illuminate a new unconscious that is capable of tracing the traces of all those women whose voices They have been erased from literary history.
The self is an other to the extent that it projects an external image that does not say so much what it is as what it wants to become. This doubling of the subject is magnificently narrated in the film ‘The Substance’
“Je est un autre”, Arthur Rimbaud wrote, barred: “I is an other.” Not only because we are all someone’s other, but because we shelter an other that determines our steps, our gestures, our language, and from which we want to get rid of. But the self is also an other when it is looked at from the outside, when the news it has about itself is the image that the mirror returns to it; The self is an other to the extent that it projects an external image that does not say so much what it is as what it wants to become. This splitting of the subject between what he really is and the image he projects – splitting with constant mismatches that inaugurates a problematic relationship of the subject with himself – is magnificently narrated in the film. The substance, written and directed by Coralie Fargeat and starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.
In the film, a Hollywood star in downturn is fired as soon as he turns fifty. The actress, far from inhabiting the sets of the city of cinema, presented an aerobics television program. But the small screen requires the presence of a younger body. The ideology of beauty expels from public spaces bodies that do not conform to the dominant canons. There are lives that do not deserve to be told, said Judith Butler in precarious lifesuch as that of racialized or migrant subjects, non-heteronormative sexualities or sick bodies; but also those of women like Elisabeth Sparkle, which is the name of the protagonist played by Demi Moore, who stop being functional for the system when they exceed the age group of fifty and are left outside the framework of visibility to begin to swell the list of those invisible lives that do not deserve to be cried or told. Until “the substance” comes into her hands, a serum that she acquires on the black market and that, when injected, generates a better version of herself. When the liquid is inoculated, Moore falls to the ground, his back opens and from the fissure emerges a young and beautiful woman, an other, represented by Margaret Qualley.
The two women are but one, as is emphasized in the leaflet that accompanies the substance that Moore consumes. The self and its other maintain a symbiotic relationship based on a balance that must be scrupulously fulfilled: every seven days, without exception, they must transfer consciousness: while one body remains unconscious and inactive, the other leads a normal life. Sue, which is the name given to the character played by Margaret Qualley, replaces Elisabeth in the television show and begins her rise to success, based on a beautiful, young and always sexualized body by the image industry.
As Miyagi said in Karate Kid, The basic thing is to maintain balance. The young Sue, who at first only recorded her programs every other week, to ensure balance, suddenly finds herself overwhelmed by erotic and work success, and the arrival of new contracts and commitments, but also of sexual relationships and a world of leisure, prevent him from precisely fulfilling the agreement to take turns with Elisabeth every week. The balance is broken and problems begin. Each stolen minute implies a radical deterioration and aging of Elisabeth’s body, which begins her becoming a monster.
The battle against herself begins. The self and its other begin to compete not only to occupy more active and conscious time; Above all, the fight against the image of the young and beautiful body that is a memory of its expulsion from the framework of capitalist visibility begins. In Literature, fashion and eroticism: desire (2003), Juan Carlos Rodríguez pointed out that a good part of the psychological disorders that capitalist society causes do not find their cause in the fact that we have internalized capitalism, as they say, and we manage our lives as if it were a company, with constant balances between debit and credit; These derive, rather, from the impossibility of externalizing the image that the mirror of ideology imposes on us, challenging us as strong, complete and autonomous subjects, capable of overcoming any adversity that life presents, capable of fighting and emerging victorious from the situation. everyday capitalist competition. When the real conditions of existence come into contradiction with the imaginary representation that the subjects have of themselves, the image suffers and the mirror cracks. Neuroses, depression and anxiety emerge through these cracks. We do not live up to the image and we find ourselves unable to say I amto constitute ourselves as fully individualized subjects.
A good part of the psychological disorders that capitalist society causes do not find their cause in the fact that we have internalized capitalism but rather in the impossibility of externalizing the image that the mirror of ideology imposes on us.
Elisabeth Sparkle, when her image no longer conforms to what the mirror wants of her and she is fired, injects herself with the substance in order to continue externalizing the image of the full subject, literally removing it from her own body. Sue represents the possibility of continuing to feed this imaginary representation and displacing the real that has taken it out of focus. But the repressed always returns and when Elisabeth looks out the window of her luxurious home in Los Angeles and sees a poster advertising her old television show, now with an image of the young and sensual Sue, the reality of her material conditions of life returns. existence, of his body not suitable for the audiovisual industry. Like a mirror, it returns the image that reminds her that her failure is due to the fact that she does not live up to what the capitalist ideology expects of her. The other-Sue who observes, and who observes her from the poster, is the imaginary representation that every subject wants to project but is unable to do so. This mismatch between the real and the imaginary – that competition between the self and the other – permanently expels Elisabeth from life – work, but also erotic – eroding her self-esteem and condemning her to loneliness. Without a social life, she just waits for the week to pass so that her best version, Sue, regains consciousness and can enjoy a full life. Yours does not count nor deserve to be lived. Until his body, increasingly repugnant due to the impertinence and uncontrollable and selfish desire of the young woman, who does not respect balance, announces the danger of his total annihilation.
‘The substance’, like much of current literature, speaks of this split and mismatch between what we really are and the image we want to project so as not to be condemned to nothingness. It deals with the psychological discomfort generated by the effort involved in having to sustain the image when we barely have anything left – material conditions – to do so.
The substance, Like much of current literature, it talks about this split and mismatch between what we really are and the image we want to project so as not to be condemned to nothingness. It deals with the psychological discomfort generated by the effort involved in having to sustain the image when we barely have anything left – material conditions – to do so. The success of Fargeat’s film is that it does so by combining terror with the parody of the aesthetics of the video clip, abruptly jumping from one style to another, as it goes from the erotic of beautiful bodies to the monstrous. There is, in The substancea politics of the abject, of ugliness, of becoming-a-monster that destabilizes and directly attacks the heart of the ideology of beauty of advanced capitalism and the commodification – and eroticization – of bodies.
Perhaps that is the way of telling that hell is in us. Hell is the other that we carry inside and prevents us from saying I amis the trace that remains of the lost battle between the image projected by the mirror of ideology and the real conditions of existence of vulnerable and alone subjects, who need care and the common, and not daily, erotic and work competition. , to which we are forced daily by the capitalist market.
#compete
