Genealogy of sacrifice: Body and memory in Romance de la negra rubia by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Abstract

The article aims to show that in Romance de la negra rubia (2014), by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, two overlapping stories are developed, one collective and one individual, to question and rethink the idea of sacrifice. Their starting point is the sacrificed body of a woman. These stories are used to construct an ironic, desacralizing genealogy of history, the calendar of saint’s days, and the sacrificed dead. The double inflection, which is centered on a self-sacrificed body, is taken to the extreme of death as a means of resistance to power, and serves to construct an ambivalent, uncomfortable, and critical memory in which nothing is presented in a simply manner, but in a double and paradoxical one, and mercantilism, sacrificial heroism, feminicide, media staging, love, struggle and political opportunism inextricably intersect under the sign of neo-baroque literature.