“Bordas sobre la trama esencial”: Needlework as Communal Rhetorical Practice in El obsceno pájaro de la noche

Abstract

This essay applies a feminist synthesis of rhetoric and material culture theory to José Donoso’s novel, El obsceno pájaro de la noche (1970). Donoso’s novel depicts needlework as a communal rhetorical practice among women characters within enclosed communities. They sew, embroider, and repair. Drawing from Goggin and Tobin’s studies of needlework as rhetorical practice (2002, 2009a, 2009b, 2009), we investigate women’s needlework and sewing, contextualizing the historical and cultural referents within Chile’s long history of textile work, including the explication of epidermal aesthetics in Halart (2017). The paradoxically violent and restorative acts of sewing and repair provides the background for the many monologues the novel sets in the sewing circles of La Chimba convent. Each woman’s stitch enacts revenge for ongoing displacement and confinement to domestic spaces of home/convent. This essay argues that las viejas develop and claim a communal voice through their needlework upon the mute and bound monster of the imbunche, which becomes the fabric for their polyvocalic expression. In sewing the figure of the imbunche, the female characters participate in a tactile rhetoric that precedes verbal and occularcentric discourse and emphasizes the immediate and relational sense of touch. Our research is feminist as it recenters Donoso criticism on the female characters within his work, to showcase how their machinations and manipulations of materials enact an agency denied by a discourse and identity which prioritizes visual and verbal expression. We encourage Donoso studies towards a feminist focus on communities of women and process over individual and product.