(Between lived bodies and physical bodies: El ultimo cuerpo de Úrsula (Ursula’s last body) by Patricia De Souza)

Abstract

Phenomenology, faced with the challenge of rescuing the body from the bad reputation attributed to it in Cartesian philosophy, takes advantage of a particular phenomenon of the German language and proposes the possibility of referring to the body by means of two words: “Körper” (physical body) and “Leib” (lived body). From this terminological peculiarity, the double dimension of the human body becomes evident. The novel “El último cuerpo de Úrsula” by Peruvian writer Patricia de Souza will be approached in accordance with this theoretical-philosophical conception. The premises that explain the interaction of the lived body and the physical body will be applied to the analysis of the novel in order to trace an idea of the bodily “limit”, but not in its function of giving an end to something or separating two different entities, but rather from the possibility of distinguishing two different aspects embodied in the same element.
After giving an introduction that shows aspects of the author’s biography and some questions that literary criticism of her work has addressed, three crucial moments of “El último cuerpo de Úrsula” will be presented; such a division will allow us to exhibit within the framework of specific events the ways in which the distinction between the lived body and the physical body is promoted at the narrative level.