The Geopoetics of exile: En estado de memoria by Tununa Mercado

Abstract

This critical note examines Tununa Mercado’s En estado de memoria (1990) through the concept of geopoetics, as proposed by Fernando Aínsa, in combination with Horacio Cerutti Guldberg’s social cartography, and other views on exile and writing. Based on Tununa Mercado’s experience of exile in Mexico, it highlights how her hybrid narrative ¾which interwines memoirs, essays, and stories¾ explores the relationship between space and the subjectivity of uprootedness. The analysis is organized into four sections: the first discusses the broken link with Argentina; the second details integration in Mexico and the creation of symbolic spaces; the third asks about return and the sense of alienation, while the last section emphasizes writing as a refuge from displacement. Thus, it is argued how, in the book En estado de memoria, memory and writing reshape the lived space of the exiled, providing a new emotive cartography. In that sense, geopoetics provides a enriching perspective to understand the affective connections with the inhabited territories, which can open relevant lines of research in the literature of exile.