Autofiction and sex-gender subjectivities: César Aira and Copi

Abstract

The two autofictional texts that we address in this work, the novel Cómo me hice monja (1993), by César Aira, and the stories of Virginia Woolf ataca de nuevo (1984), by Copi, combine the inclusion of the author's own name within the fiction with the staging of sex-gender identities that introduce cracks in the sex-gender system (Rubin “El trafico” 97). These uses of the author's own name within fiction trace, according to our hypothesis, three types of “commitments” —understood as forms of adherence or involvement—, with something different from them: a “commitment to ontological subversion” or “fiction-reality” (inverting Ludmer's formula), a “social commitment” and/or an “existential commitment”. This implies, in each case, some degree of involvement with the ontological-literary aspect, with the Other or with the Self. Likewise, these commitments suppose certain effects on the ways of conceiving the sexual and generic aspect of textual identities.