Men’s literature. Body mural Maras: Lace canvases woven in skin

Abstract

In this paper I read Mara’s tattoos as murals, or lace paintings carved into the skin. I use three  conceptual  proposals: 1) Laurent Berlant’s ‘public intimacy’; 2)  Angela Carters’s ‘pornography’; and 3) Clyde  Barrow’  ‘lumpenproletariat.’ My claim is that a concept used by feminist theorists, that of ‘women’s literature,’ turned  upside down can be read as ‘men’s literature’ and, how,  concepts stored in the historical warehouse and in disuse  could, turned inside out, galvanize the reading or current  circumstances. The same holds true for the concept of  moral or metaphysical pornography read as men’s  literature and of the  lumpenproletariat as a group  expression at the service of right and left politics.

Realidad: Revista de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades No. 162, 2023: 7-15.