“To form a barricade with our bodies": the localised body/bodies in "New Portuguese Letters"

Abstract

The controversial and revolutionary book New Portuguese Letters (1972), by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta and Maria Velho da Costa, can be characterised by two interlinked motifs: an insistence on bringing numerous (and highly localised) experiences of women into representation, and the recurring image of the female body (or female bodies). Considering these two elements in tandem, this essay will argue that the Three Marias anticipate, through their literary text, the “politics of location” (Rich et al) that have influenced feminist theory and practice since the 1980s. This study will consider the ways in which New Portuguese Letters attributes a specific “location” (or multiple locations) to numerous female bodies, in order to denote individual material experiences, and the extent to which the individual bodies of women are used by the authors to create a “block” (or a “barricade”) of resistance and global female solidarity. It will conclude, however, that the geometry and limits of a single body are necessary elements for the construction of this durable and unbreakable block.