Metamorphosis as Sexual Liberation? Animal Performance in Concha Alós's "La coraza"

Abstract

This study explores the metamorphosis of the protagonist of “La coraza” (The Armour), a short story written by Concha Alós, and included in her collection Rey de gatos. Narraciones antropófagas (King of Cats. Anthropophagous Narratives) (1972). Our aim is to show how the mutation into an insect responds to a defence mechanism, or adaptation to the environment, while confronting an extreme situation that pushes the anonymous protagonist to become a lethal insect that devours her lover during copulation. Based on the notions of biopolitics and animality, provided by Gabriel Giorgi and Julieta Yelin, this short story is read as an agonising expression that rebels against the presumed sexual liberation of a society eager for structural change in the midst of political transition after a long dictatorship. The result of this discursive dynamic is the persistence of patriarchal values that continue to subjugate female bodies in favour of an objectification that encourages greater availability of bodies for the use of pleasure. This context is conducive to the entrenchment of social myths that act as biopolitical tools that direct bodies and subjectivities towards pernicious performativities in their sexual practices. For this reason, the metamorphosis of “La coraza” approaches the animal in order to (de)activate other possible paths of the living and the liveable.