She Writes in Scarlet Ink
The Menstrual Aesthetics in Cristina Peri Rossi´s Poetry
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12795/RICL2025.i28.15Keywords:
Cristina Peri Rossi, Poetry, Women´s Writing, MenstruationAbstract
The menstrual blood stands out in the work of Cristina Peri Rossi as a recurring and noteworthy image, endowed with erotic and transgressive connotations. Against the androcentric perception of menstruation as a stigma and defect, the Uruguayan writer reconstructs and redefines its image as an object of erotic fascination marked by excess and exuberance, a sacred symbol of the feminine alliance based on the acceptance of otherness, an analogue of women´s writing that flows and expands without limits. She reclaims the sacredness of menstrual blood and the superfluity of the phallus in a new erotic, lesbian, gynocentric imaginary and thus invents a menstrual aesthetic (and ethic) through which a new feminine community can be established. Through the resignification of menstruation, the writer returns to the woman her own body, which is decolonized already. This article seeks to explore this new transgressive menstrual aesthetic in the poetic work of Cristina Peri Rossi based on the notions of eroticism, excess, expense and abjection.
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