“Il corpo malato e la crisi dell'identità unitaria. Ibridazione e metamorfosi in Guadalupe Nettel e Lina Meruane”

Illness seems to be a central theme for contemporary Latin-American literature. It is not only the object of the observation, but also a critical instrument to debilitate strong categories and binomes (such as male/female, sane/sick, alive/dead, human/non-human). This essay analyses the processes of hybridisation and metamorphosis related to illness in El huésped by Guadalupe Nettel and Fruta podrida by Lina Meruane. This examples show two diferent possibilities to embody the pathological experience: living against it and liv- ing with it. Illness could be an unpleasant partner, and there is no way to identify ourself with her, or a part of a wider us, opening to non-unitarian identity such as complexes and transforming organism. This consideration shows how Latin-American literature reflects on identity in a queer and posthuman way trough the metaphors that illness bring to the table.