Maternal Absence, Extractivism and the Cult of Death in Our Share of Night, by Mariana Enríquez

Abstract

This article analyzes the novel Our Share of Night (2019) by the Argentine writer Mariana Enríquez as a revision of the Gothic representation of nineteenth-century motherhood, either as an absent or monstrous figure. I argue that maternal absence, in addition to mobilizing the characters in the search for their origin, also enables the representation of men in caregiving roles that are strengthened as they are feminized. The Goth aspects of the novel emanate from the representation of a monstrous motherhood in charge of perpetuating the rule of a bloodline of English industrialists settled in Argentina who cover up their veneration of the "Darkness" —an evil spirit called that feeds on human bodies— with a discourse of material progress. The figure of the "Darkness" allegorizes the cult of death inherent in extractive capitalism, as it consumes the bodies subjected to the production of surplus value and transforms those in charge of the reproduction and protection of life into ghosts.