“No vengas al país de los ríos”: la escritura de Inés Arredondo y la estética de la oscuridad

Abstract

This article proposes a reading a reading of five short-stories by Mexican writer Inés Arredondo from the perspective of Gothic literature as a dominant aesthetic all along her literary carreer. “La sunamita”, “Apunte gótico”, “Río subterráneo”, “Las mariposas nocturnas” and “Sombra entre sombras” are all works characterized by the following thematics: the gaze and its importance in relation to power dynamics; ritual, the animalistic and instinct as part of the human condition; sexuality as a locus for violence; triangular relationships, in particular, those which transgress norms of gender, age or sexual preference. In most texts the river is a symbol of the dark current that runs hidden under the smooth surface of “the normal”, a force that drags characters along, in a tragic fashion. In Arredondo’s writings, horror is not of supernatural but of (all too) human origin, and it is narrated in a prose where the exquisite and the uncanny meet in shuddering complicity.