L’importanza di non chiamarsi. Il ‘nome anonimo’ del protagonista nel romanzo di Cristina Peri Rossi “La nave de los locos”

Abstract

The paper focuses on the analysis of the name of the protagonist of Cristina Peri Rossi’s work La nave de los locos, which is part of the corpus of Hispano- American novels that have exile as their central theme. The protagonist of the novel chooses to give himself a name/non-name, an anonymous name: Equis. My article shows that this choice meets several objectives. First of all, the name Equis turns the protagonist into an incarnation of the exile par excellence, its phonetics suggesting the prefix ex and hence words like exiliado and extranjero, among others. Moreover, the decision to give himself an anonymous name responds to the protagonist’s desire for self-determination and escape from an imposed, monolithic identity. The latter, in fact, is considered to be the basis of a series of binary oppositions – such as self/ other, native/foreigner, wise/foolish, man/woman – that give rise to practices of oppression and marginalization, of which Equis himself is a victim.