THE BODY IN MULHER AO MAR BRASIL, BY MARGARIDA VALE DE GATO

Abstract

This study explores how the body is treated as a site of writing, inheritance, and resistance in the poetry of Margarida Vale de Gato, with a focus on her book Mulher ao Mar Brasil (2021). Conceived as a symbolic, historical, and material legacy, the female body is reinscribed by the author through a multidimensional, critical, and poetic lens. Gato’s poetics challenge conventional gender roles and linguistic norms by reconfiguring patriarchal symbols, positioning her within a lineage of Portuguese women writers such as Natália Correia, Maria Teresa Horta, Luiza Neto Jorge, and Ana Luísa Amaral. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s concept of inheritance as an active gesture, this work interprets Gato’s writing as an exercise in critical affiliation: the poet chooses, embraces, and transforms the past she invokes. To this end, the study examines how the materiality of writing intersects with the materiality of the body, engaging with theoretical contributions from Donna Haraway, Silvia Federici, Hélène Cixous, Octavio Paz, and Roland Barthes to explore the entanglements of body, language, eroticism, and tradition.