Rape as an identity construction in Giovanna Rivero Santa Cruz´s narrative

Abstract

The narrative of Giovanna Rivero Santa Cruz, which has been around for more than twenty years, has mainly gone through the gothic, fantastic and erotic genres and has made violence, in its different ways, its most revisited subject. Among the sequences that her narrative detaches, sexual assault is the one that appears most vigorous, in stories that have rape or abuse as their turning point and that make it possible to problematize the notions of victim, consent and testimony.

The subject is not far from the narrative patterns of the most traditional Bolivian literature of the 20^th century neither from the topics of contemporary narrative, however it is possible to assert, from a critical gender perspective, that Rivero´s fiction, mainly the novel Las camaleonas (2001) and the collection of short stories Tierra fresca de su tumba (2020), develop alternative representation orders, which separates from heteropatriarchal discourses and, on the basis of the construction of tragic stories about rape, enable a reflection on lives in danger (Butler, 2017), identities in transition (Morini, 2015) and the creation of alliances and new living spaces.