MATERNIDAD Y PARANOIA EN EL ESTADO AUTORITARIO: LEYENDO ELTIT DESDE SCHREBER

The present article explores the maternal body as a symbol that materializes the threat of authoritarianism. Two very different texts, Daniel Paul Schreber memoir, which inspired some of the main studies on paranoia in the 20th century, and the novel The Custody of the Eyes by Diamela Eltit, present the maternal body as paranoid reactions to the advent of fascism, in the first case, and of a neoliberal regime that thinly veils the dictatorial control of the citizen, in the second one. The split of the ego that constitutes for Julia Kristeva a fundamental part of the maternal experience appears in these texts as the most appropriate medium to reveal and denounce the perversion of two societies under the influence of authoritarianism.