Abstract

IBARLUCIA, Rocío. Figurations of Writing in Antes que anochezca (1992) by Reinaldo Arenas. CELEHIS [online]. 2022, n.43, pp.31-40. ISSN 2313-9463.

Written in a hurry before the imminence of death, Reinaldo Arena’s autobiography Antes que anochezca (1992) is written motivated by revenge against the political, aesthetic and heteronormative model promoted by the Cuban revolutionary regime. The text, excessive and desperate, is full of reflections on writing, defined as a space of liberation from sexual and literary ties. The present work aims to examine those figurations of writing unfolded in various scenes, ranging from their initiation to writing practices in childhood to the (im)possibilities of writing in contexts of censorship, imprisonment and illness. Also, we propose to examine the representations of writing in the composition of the text itself, following Zanetti's proposal (2002), in which we find a materiality sustained between an absent and present body, since its testimony is secretly constructed, sketched in stolen notebooks, loose sheets and finished through voice recordings in the hospital bed.

Keywords : Reinaldo Arenas; Antes que anochezca; autobiography; figurations of writing; childhood.

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