Resisting Invisibility: Detecting the Female Body in Spanish Crime Fiction (Toronto Iberic)

Engaging with pre-feminist and male-authored crime literature, __Resisting Invisibility__ offers a comparative reading of women’s bodies as represented in Spanish crime literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Utilizing the twin concepts of visibility and invisibility, the book establishes a genealogy of differing viewpoints regarding women’s positions in these narratives, before and after the birth of the modern Spanish female detective. This examination of the politics of female visibility expands our understanding of the aesthetic regimes that have governed the female body from the early phases of the genre’s evolution. While most scholars understand the feminization of the crime genre as a response to second-wave feminism, __Resisting Invisibility__ demonstrates that even in the earliest representations of delinquent women, the politics surrounding the female body are problematized and are more complex than previously conceptualized. Drawing on gender and queer studies, __Resisting Invisibility__ investigates the gendering of crime fiction, forcing us to reconsider the literary history of female visibility and prompting us to establish an alternative genealogy for Spanish crime literature. "Resisting Invisibility investigates the politics of visibility of women's bodies in Spanish crime fiction. By 'politics of female visibility', the author refers to the textual practices that determine the imperceptibility of women's bodies, including both exposure and erasure. What is at stake in the politics of visibility is the constitution of women as political subjects. The politics of visibility takes on a crucial role in crime fiction because it changes the nature of the story, from a plot that hinges on a female body denied full political participation through various strategies of objectification, to a narrative where the body functions as a critical tool of resistance to pinpoint the ineffectiveness of the legal system. The book provides insight into how authors engage readers with the politics of visibility of the female body through their manipulation of generic conventions involving the gaze and how, in turn, the female body gains or resists visibility."-- Provided by publisher Cover 1 Half Title Page 2 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 8 Acknowledgments 10 Introduction: Detecting the Female Body in Gendered Mysteries 14 1: Reading the Female Delinquent in Early Spanish Crime Fiction 38 2: Investigating the “Eye” in Twentieth-Century Spanish Crime Novels 77 3: Parodying the Male Gaze in Lourdes Ortiz’s Picadura mortal 116 4: A New Politics of Visibility in the Lònia Guiu Series 150 5: Lesbianizing the Genre 189 Conclusion: Exploring an Alternative Crime Fiction Genealogy 231 Notes 240 Works Cited 256 Index 270 Toronto Iberic 294 This book examines representations of the female body in the early phases of contemporary Spanish crime literature.