He Who Searches by Luisa Valenzuela

First published:Como en la guerra, 1977 (English translation, 1979)

Type of plot: Social morality

Time of work: The 1970’s

Locale: Barcelona, Spain; Mexico; and Argentina

Principal Characters:

• Pepe (Az), whose name is “not determined out of indifference,” a psychoanalyst and semiotics professor at the University of Barcelona
• She, his patient, an Argentine political exile who works as a cocktail waitress and prostitute and is never named
• Sister (She-She), the unnamed sister of the cocktail waitress, a guerrilla leader
• Beatriz, the wife of Pepe
• Alfredo Navoni, a former lover of the waitress, who is a guerrilla who went underground and forgot her

The Novel

He Who Searches opens with a brief scene in which a man is interrogated and raped with the butt of a gun. This scene ends abruptly, and the novel’s first part, entitled “Discovery,” begins. The psychoanalyst describes his patient, and the narrative introduces his unusual method of treatment, which includes appearing at her house in various disguises, from postman to transvestite, and having a sexual relationship with her. Their relationship embraces a variety of fantasies, including one in which he is an insurance man. Valenzuela ironically includes in this section questions such as “Against what can she be trying to protect herself?” The reader knows that there is no insurance for a revolutionary in exile. Eventually, the psychoanalyst’s wife discovers the affair that her husband is having with his patient.

In the second part, “The Loss,” the psychoanalyst spends time with his wife but longs for his patient, who has disappeared. While reading a story in the newspaper about a banderillero in a barroom brawl, he recognizes his patient in an accompanying photograph. He believes that “a trickle of blood” will lead him to her.

In the third part, “The Journey,” the psychoanalyst arrives in Mexico, where he participates in a purification ritual and is guided by Nahuatl-speaking Indian women through the mountains. He meets a woman named Maria Sabina, who gives him sacred mushrooms. This passage recalls the Cave of Montesinos, in which Don Quixote experiences self-revelation through an encounter with the heroes of chivalric novels. The narrator explains that the jungle in Mexico is also the jungle in Argentina.

The psychoanalyst experiences the sensation of living the life that his patient has hidden from him, including the words of her former lover, Alfredo Navoni. Here, the psychoanalyst’s character merges with hers. He witnesses an all-night vigil for a dead guerrilla. The guerrillas tell him a story in which there is a bizarre ritual of cannibalism, in which a character named Fatty, who likes things from India, is eaten. In the fourth and final part, the psychoanalyst finds himself in the midst of a political uprising in Argentina. When asked why he is there, he explains that he is searching for a woman and for himself, his feminine counterpart. He proceeds past barriers into the fighting. The fighting takes place in a large park. A revolutionary woman gives him an assignment, to place charges. After he plants dynamite in holes in a box of cement, there is an enormous explosion, and he has a vision of his lover in a coffin that shines like a diamond. At this point, the story ends. It is possible, however, that the very first scene in the novel involves the psychoanalyst sometime after he has planted the dynamite, and that he is being interrogated concerning the whereabouts of his patient.

The Characters

Valenzuela’s characters both are split and merge into one another: The semiotician refers to himself as “we”; the patient he studies has a twin sister and dreams her lover Alfredo Navoni’s dreams as if they were her own. When Pepe travels in the mountains through Mexico, he has access to the knowledge of his patient. His consciousness is no longer distinguishable from hers, even though she is absent.

Pepe, the main character, calls himself a “humble professor of semiotics.” He justifies his bizarre behavior to himself and to his jealous wife by claiming that he is merely engaging in a psychoanalytic investigation of his patient. Although he is blind to her political identity, he exploits what he believes to be true regarding her knowledge of his identity: She does not know that he is giving her therapy; she does not know who he is; she does not know that he is the same person every time he sees her, thanks to his disguises. His search ends when he finds her in a vision, dead, and thereby finds himself. This self-knowledge is followed by the experience of torture.

Valenzuela shows the reader what the characters cannot see; she guides the reader to the outermost edges of her characters and forces the reader to see them in their sociohistoric environments. Although the characters do not know one another’s identities, the reader of the novel does have access to this information.

The revolutionary in exile never identifies herself. She is aware that the psychoanalyst appears regularly in various disguises, although she admits that she does not know who he is and does not ask. She fears that he may be an agent of the army intelligence, Interpol, or the CIA; she carries a weapon just in case he is an intelligence officer.

People in the neighborhood where she lives complain. Her pimp-landlord observes that even though she is a prostitute, she walks down the street “like a virgin pure and clean.” He suspects that she has special, witchlike powers and regrets renting her a place. He blames her for the talk of meetings and a strike among the other prostitutes.

The reader is given strange bits of information about the patient. She has a collection of hands. She used to tease adults to buy her toy cars so she could seduce little boys, with their clothes on. She and her twin sister, She-She, were betrayed to the police by Alfredo Navoni. Both were political activists and both were tortured. She fantasizes about murdering the psychoanalyst.

Beatriz is a jealous wife who transcribes and types the notes from the meetings that the psychoanalyst has with his Argentine patient. She agonizes over his absences. Valenzuela describes her as a starving, toothless cat in contrast to the predatory “she” cat.

Alfredo Navoni is a self-serving man who may have betrayed the two sisters to the police. The revolutionary in exile has two of her former lover’s dreams, one about a wolf that devours ducks and a dog, and one “Venus in furs” fantasy, a “railroad striptease,” in which a woman strips on railroad tracks and then lies down on the tracks. One salient feature of the dreams is that they constitute a binary opposition: One is an active fantasy while the other is passive.

Critical Context

Throughout her works, Valenzuela uses feminism and Marxism to interrogate each other. Her familiarity with French poststructuralism is seen in her reference to the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. She quotes him: “The signifier [is] destined to designate the overall effects of the signified.”

Valenzuela’s treatment of characters suggests that she shares with Lacan the notion of the alienated self. Lacan’s “mirror phase,” in which the child discovers a corporeal unity or form through his or her perception of another human being, accounts for the fascination with the other’s image as an anticipation of identification with this image. Considering He Who Searches, it can be said that the psychoanalyst searches for himself through his image of his patient. The psychoanalyst is already an adult, but Valenzuela may be somewhat ironic in her treatment of this and other psychoanalytic categories. At a deeper level, she subscribes to the Hegelian and Marxist view that the self cannot be understood except in relation to the other, and she applies this view to the Argentine nation. The family from the country, waiting in line in the political uprising, explains that its members need to be heard and that the people in the city must listen to them. This is a reference to a fundamental division in Argentine society between the urban and the rural populations.

Valenzuela’s work cannot be understood apart from the political, social, cultural, and historical context of Argentina, which includes the fact that many Argentines live in exile. The situation of the main character of He Who Searches, “she,” is a poignant illustration of a character who is forced to deepen her understanding of her own culture in absentia, while living in another country. This situation is not specific to Argentina; it is a metaphor which speaks to all political exiles.

In Cambio de armas (1982; Other Weapons, 1985), Valenzuela also juxtaposed political issues and the male-female relationship. In He Who Searches, it is the psychoanalyst who falls in love with the political exile. In “The Word Killer,’ ” a story in Other Weapons, the female character falls in love with a torturer. The woman is fascinated and aroused by his violent past and fears that she loves him because he is a killer. In both stories, the identities of male and female characters are inextricably bound. These stories lead one to question the nature of the erotic hold on the desire that links individuals to violence. If Valenzuela could tease these links free and examine them, perhaps she could find a cure. In the meantime, it is clear that she believes that the enemy is within our own fascination with violence. The development of a vaccination will probably have to draw from the very traditions that Valenzuela parodies, psychoanalysis and Marxism. Most certainly, a valuable component in the cure will be feminist analysis.

Bibliography

Bach, Caleb. “Metaphors and Magic Unmask the Soul.” Americas 47 (January/February, 1995): 22-27. Offers a fascinating look at Valenzuela’s life and writing career. Briefly explores some of her themes and examines some of the writers who have influenced her, such as Jorge Luis Borges.

Garfield, Evelyn P. “Luisa Valenzuela.” In Latin American Writers, edited by Carlos A. Solé and Maria I. Abreau. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989. Offers an entry on Valenzuela that covers her life and career. Presents in-depth readings of many of her works, and includes a selected bibliography.

Hoeppner, Edward H. “The Hand That Mirrors Us: Luisa Valenzuela’s Re-Writing of Lacan’s Theory of Identity.” Latin American Literary Review 20 (January/June, 1992): 9-17. Hoeppner focuses on the narrator, a professor who is violently tortured and whose violent quest for love parallels his physical suffering. Hoeppner argues that Valenzuela’s use of the symbol of the phallus as symbolic of desire is linked to the theories of Jacques Lacan.

Kadir, Djelal. “Focus on Luisa Valenzuela.” World Literature Today 69 (Autumn, 1995): 668-670. A revealing profile of Valenzuela that covers her tenure as a Puterbaugh Fellow at the University of Oklahoma, the quality and style of her writing, and her focus on human potential and failures. Although this essay does not address any particular work, it offers interesting background information.

Pinto, Magdalena. Women Writers of Latin America: Intimate Histories. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. A collection of interviews with Latin American women writers, including one with Luisa Valenzuela. Features helpful bibliographic references for further reading and an index.