Ugly Duckling Tales: Humour, Shame, Narcissism and Orality in La traición de Rita Hayworth (1968) and La patografía (1998)

Abstract

Informed by philosophy and psychoanalytical theory, this analysis proposes that Puig and Lozada adopt a humoristic attitude in both novels and experiment with polyphony and orality to define what I call “loca” writing. This narcissistic oral writing adheres to the aesthetics of kitsch and camp to recreate the liminal “surface” of humour (Deleuze 1969) as a rhetorical and philosophical tool to transcend shame and resist normalization with original voices and spaces.