Mothers and nomadic subjects: Configurations of identity and desire in Laura Restrepo's La novia oscura

This article deals with gender and subjectivity in Laura Restrepo's La novia oscura, in which Colombia's insertion into multinational capitalism creates homosocial subcommunities which briefly challenge patriarchal-heterosexual norms. The novel explores the mother-daughter relationship as part of a `lesbian continuum'. Its crucial resymbolization of the mother figure can be seen as a feminist reinscription of foundational fictions, and becomes a counterpoint to a psychic and physical nomadism, which, while echoing tropes of displacement common to the Colombian cultural context, also becomes emblematic of postmodern feminine subjectivity.