The uncanny in the representation of provincial spaces:

La mujer sin cabeza by Lucrecia Martel

Abstract

“La mujer sin cabeza” (2008) by the Argentine director Lucrecia Martel is designed as a “horror movie” and is based on an oral story from the Argentine northwest about souls. From this starting point, I am interested in investigating the idea of ​​"the uncanny" in the film, following some proposals from the text "The uncanny" by Freud.

I will analyze two aspects of "the uncanny" in the representation of certain provincial places. On the one hand, I propose that the film unfolds a work on the uncanny of certain mechanisms of erasure of history. These mechanisms are perceived through the forgetfulness about the foundational accident that opens the film and functions as a leitmotif on which the story revolves: in those provincial places there is an emphasis on working with the silence, the unsaid, the absence, and the anonymity. On the other hand, I investigate the representation of provincial spaces marked by the uncanny of the power relations that are established there. Thus, I propose that the film works with the ideas of the "ghost" and the "spectral": there are historically homogenized and invisible voices there.

Finally, I wonder about the intervention of Lucrecia Martel in the Argentine cultural field in relation to the representation of these provincial places, and I propose to think about Martel's film project from an omnipresent interest in certain contemporary conflicts that various indigenous communities are going through in different provinces Argentines.