“Yo no vi entonces sino su mucho deseo”. Plural Memories in Luis Antonio de Villena

Abstract

Luis Antonio de Villena’s aesthetic proposal is distinguished by the first-person exploration of the desire: body becomes a textual device. In this sense, Lúcidos bordes del abismo. Memoria personal de los Panero (2014) constitutes an experience of singular power in the investigation of the story of the past in terms of the intimate. The hypothesis of the present work maintains that the problematization of the public figurations of the Panero family allows the voice to give an account of itself in a displaced way: the first person is reconverted into a collective dimension. Then, memory is postulated as a public issue and becomes a device for reflection—not circumscribed in generic terms. In this way, imagining the common past since the demolition of mythologized perceptions will be a way of transforming textual memory into an unfinished project.