Book Notes: Paulina Flores and the Climax of Women’s Liberation

In case people don’t know, I’m now into Chilean literature. My first article on a Chilean author came out a couple of months ago, and there will a chapter on Chile in my new book. Chile was “the laboratory of neoliberalism”, as one scholar said, and it’s ahead of other places in the development of a neoliberal sensibility. This makes the literature created by Chilean authors today absolutely delicious to me.

A few days ago, writer Paulina Flores published a novel titled The Next Time I See You, I’ll Kill You. I immediately read it, and it’s a neoliberal delight of a book. Its narrator, Javiera, is a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from Chile to Spain. She has no stable job, no documents, no husband or child, no place to live, and no hope of getting any of these things that she painfully wants. Instead, Javiera has a litany of left-wing slogans that she tries to use to find a way not to hate her life too much.

Javiera is so lonely that she falls madly in love with another illegal immigrant, Manuel from Peru. Manuel has a little harem of desperate women he beds after convincing them to embrace “polyamorous identity.” Javiera hates being one of several interchangeable receptacles for Manuel’s ejaculate but she tries to convince herself that polyamory is what will finally make her really free and really rebellious. In the meantime, she fantasizes about murdering Manuel’s other mistresses in hopes that, if they manage to stay alone for a bit, he will finally appreciate her and commit.

Even 10-15 years ago, Latin American women really knew how to not be such utter losers in amorous relationships. If they agreed to be mistresses, they at least expected to be put up in a place of their own and have their bills paid. Javiera and the rest of Manuel’s girlfriends have lost that skill. They sulk around, fully realizing that they hate this arrangement but are unable to find a way to explain to themselves why this newfound form of freedom is making them so miserable.

Javiera and her sex slave sisters are terrified of growing older. They fantasize about being little girls or teenagers because the realization that they are in their thirties and have achieved absolutely nothing is unbearable. Besides, there’s always a battalion of younger, fresher bodies for Manuel to use up and throw out after Javiera’s shift in the policule is terminated by her age.

The complete abjection of these poor stupid women is painful to observe. Two centuries of battling for women’s liberation to achieve this? The most oppressive patriarchal marriage is better than what Javiera has. In college we had to read a foundational short story of Latín American feminism where a woman feels horribly oppressed because the husband who gives her wealth, comfort, status and respect is not extremely sensitive. Even a quarter century ago I hated that story with such a passion that the professor complained about me being disruptive to the department Chair. He responded that I was the best student in the history of that department and if she couldn’t teach me, maybe she shouldn’t be teaching at all. But I digress.

In the intervening years, women have liberated themselves from the insensitive husband, wealth, status, and respect. Now Javiera and Co have an insensitive Manuel who barely notices when one of them dies and immediately proceeds to find another desperate mark. What a fantastic feminist achievement that is.