«To say the word I»: a reflection on the subjectivity in José Ángel Valente works

Abstract

The so-called Question on the subject in José Ángel Valente’s Works is going to be analysed in this essay. This essay is been thought from the writer’s reject to the definition of subjectivity as a representation of the consciousness, as a permanent request opposed to an ever-changing Reality. From this point, we’ll be able to see how at the same time his texts pose this conflict and look for the solution. This analyse will start from the following three levels: the treatment given to the lyrical self, the relationship between man and Reality, and the reformulation of the concept of authorship. This will take us from the first manoeuvres of ironical desubjectivation —in debt with an anguished perception of the existence as with to the necessity of treating the subjectivity from the compromise with the collective— to the writer’s assumption of a mystical focussing on this question, a question in which Nothingness and Otherness will play a decisive role.