Staging of the Self in Sangre de amor correspondido, by Manuel Puig

Abstract

This paper offers a discursive analysis of the self-statements uttered by Josemar, the protagonist of Sangre de amor correspondido (1982), a novel by Manuel Puig, understood as a technique for staging his subjectivity. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of care of the self and veridiction, we propose an updated discussion by exploring how the character’s monologue—based on a real worker—reflects a crisis in practices of the self. The hypothesis is that Josemar’s discourse reflects an alienated performance, characteristic of modernity, which does not aim at truth-telling. The discursive materiality is composed of excerpts that reveal internal contradictions (stories repeated with inconsistent details) and external contradictions (fantasies contrasted with material precarity), amplified by the use of the third person, which distances Josemar from his own self. Moreover, the centrality of sexual discourse, shaped by a performance of hegemonic masculinity, reveals practices of the self reduced to non-reflective repetitions, regulated by the biopolitics of mass culture. Thus, this study highlights the impoverishment of technologies of the self in modernity, linking Josemar’s subjectivity to broader dynamics of power and social control.