Cut (outs) of Infancy: Silvina Ocampo’s Invenciones del recuerdo

Abstract

This article focuses on the issue of childhood using the metaphor of child handcrafts such as cutting (out), tracing, sketching, drawing or sticking, to symbolize the writings of infancy and the origin of poetic creation. Starting from the image of a textuality that’s been cut and folded (or stuck) several dialogues emerge induced by the feminine textile work, by memories and their intra and intertextual relations, which determine a fragmented and complex textile structure characterized by the sheet and the folding of the fabric from which infancy is palindromicly narrated. The representation of the autobiographic narrative and the construction of the female child from the perspective of a distant poetic subject, separated and cut from her childhood, brings us closer to a ludic story full of simulacra while narrating childhood.