Mapping the SelfLeonora Carrington’s Journey through the Mad Mind in "Down Below"

  1. Laura de la Parra Fernández 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Salamanca
    info

    Universidad de Salamanca

    Salamanca, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02f40zc51

Aldizkaria:
Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

ISSN: 0210-6124

Argitalpen urtea: 2021

Alea: 43

Zenbakia: 2

Orrialdeak: 110-129

Mota: Artikulua

DOI: 10.28914/ATLANTIS-2021-43.2.06 SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-85125641638 WoS: WOS:000736600300007 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

Beste argitalpen batzuk: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Laburpena

This article examines the Map of Down Below as a central element for understanding Leonora Carrington’s "Down Below" (1944). Carrington’s Surrealist memoir about madness, first dictated in French and then translated into and published in English, recounts her experience of being interned in a mental asylum during the early Francoist dictatorship in Spain while trying to flee from the Nazis in France. The text has often been read as a Surrealist autobiography contesting André Breton’s "Nadja" (1928). However, and without disavowing this reading, I argue that the way in which Carrington narrates her experience of madness is a means to gather knowledge about the world and the Self beyond the literary and institutional conventions of the time, namely, autobiography and eugenic psychiatry as part of the authoritarian state. Thus, I explore how "Down Below", as life writing, illuminates a form of truth that deviates from the autobiographical tradition of the unitarian Self. Carrington’s found truth sheds light on other possibilities of experiencing —or creating— the Self, while she also challenges both the normative Francoist psychiatry and traditional life writing.

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The research underpinning this article was carried out thanks to a Visiting Fellowship for Doctoral Research Fellows granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education (EST2017/0008) for a short research period at Harvard University. The author also wishes to acknowledge the support of the research project “Gender and Pathography from a Transnational Perspective”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-113330-GBI00).

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