The Suffering Body in Pepe Sales’s Poetry

  1. Antoni Maestre Brotons 1
  1. 1 Universitat d'Alacant
    info

    Universitat d'Alacant

    Alicante, España

    ROR https://ror.org/05t8bcz72

Journal:
Cultura, lenguaje y representación = Culture, language and representation: revista de estudios culturales de la Universitat Jaume I = cultural studies journal of Universitat Jaume I

ISSN: 1697-7750

Year of publication: 2022

Issue Title: Poesía contemporánea y estudios afectivos: aproximaciones teóricas y lecturas

Issue: 29

Pages: 45-59

Type: Article

DOI: 10.6035/CLR.6399 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openOpen access editor

More publications in: Cultura, lenguaje y representación = Culture, language and representation: revista de estudios culturales de la Universitat Jaume I = cultural studies journal of Universitat Jaume I

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Abstract

The poems of Pepe Sales (Barcelona, 1 954 - 1 994) are marked by his experience as a homosexual, drug addict and AIDS sufferer. He was a key member of the Barcelona counterculture, along with Pau R iba, Pau Malvido and Genís Cano, and has gone down in history as one of the poètes maudits of contem porar y Catalan literature. The aim of this article is to analyse the representation of pa in and distress in his poems and songs, with some additional refer e nces to his paintings. To this end, I draw on the critical work of Susan Sontag, Sara Ahmed, David L e Bre ton and Joanna Bourke, who conceive pain in general, not as a private and personal e xperience, but as a cultural and historical event that creates ide n tity and community bonds. The main strategies used by Sales to convey his pain are the scream, anima lisat ion, weapons and wounds , as well as , especially, the scar or the religious stigma. The basic finding i s that the poet’s pain is not simply a testim ony to the s uffering of a lost generation of junkies and misfits that the official account of the transition fro m Fra ncoism to democracy has stigmatised. On the contrary, it reminds us of an unfair med ical, poli tical and financial system that inflicted gre at s uffering on them.

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Data source: Dialnet