Memories of Electra (1984): The Rhetoric of Transgression

Abstract

This article analyzes Memorias de Electra (1984) by Mariela Dreyfus, situating the collection within the context of the Kloaka poetry group and examining its relationship with the Hora Zero movement. Through a hermeneutic analysis grounded in Néstor Braunstein’s psychoanalytic theory and in dialogue with the works of Luce Irigaray and Georges Bataille, the study explores how the collection reconfigures 1980s Lima by articulating bodies, subjectivities, and marginal urban spaces. It argues that the lumpenization of both language and bodies functions as a poetic strategy that challenges patriarchal order and the symbolic regime governing desire and jouissance. The article also examines the construction of female and male poetic voices to demonstrate how the collection problematizes the relationship between the Law, prohibition, and subjectivity, proposing a form of resistance expressed through the pursuit of a specifically feminine jouissance beyond phallocentric logic. Finally, it contends that Dreyfus reworks Kloaka’s aesthetic project by developing a representation of the body that transcends social denunciation and transforms transgression into a constitutive principle of female subjectivity. In doing so, the article offers a renewed interpretation of Memorias de Electra by bringing together the categories of body, city, and jouissance within a psychoanalytic framework.