Beyond the Human: Maternity, Affect, and Monstrous Lives in the Narrative of Argentine Writer Samanta Schweblin

Abstract

In a context of stark transformation of gender and queer rights, activism, and life sustaining practices, the narrative work of Argentine writer Samanta Schweblin forms part of the insistent thematization of experiences of maternity, kinship and care in recent national fiction. I propose that, throughout her production, such focus is expanded beyond the realm of the human to think through the broader potentialities of motherhood and (re)production in connection to the living and the animal. As I will show through my reading of three short stories published in the 2019 collection Mouthful of Birds, Schweblin’s work probes the affective and material work entailed in life sustenance and care. Maternal care is here recast through the concrete process of physical nutrition, and attention is drawn to its entanglement with productive capitalist practices. This writing thus opens space to imagine fresh physical configurations and assemblages of the human and the non-human as well as alternative forms of distribution of life sustaining affects, relations and material care.

The present chapter is part of ANID/CONICYT FONDECYT project No. 11180229, “Más allá de lo humano: cuerpo femenino y afecto en la literatura y las artes visuales contemporáneas de Chile y Argentina” [Beyond the Human: Female Body and Affect in the contemporary literature and visual arts of Chile and Argentina], under the direction of Cynthia Francica.