The Ordinary Odyssey: Female Embodiment and the Politics of Walking in Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows

Abstract

Abstract

In Claudia Piñeiro’s Elena Knows, the simple act of walking is transformed into a complex corporeal language of dissent. This paper argues that the novel portrays the female body in motion as a direct site of resistance against the political, social and medical forces that seek to discipline and immobilize it. Through a close examination of three critical journeys; Elena’s Parkinson’s afflicted pilgrimage across the city, Rita’s fatal walk to the church belfry and Isabel’s intercepted path to the abortion clinic, this work uncovers a spectrum of defiance articulated through movement. Framed by the theoretical lenses of Michel de Certeau’s everyday tactics, Simone de Beauvoir’s situated body and Michel Foucault’s biopolitics, it reveals how Elena’s stunted steps reclaim agency, how Rita’s final walk refuses a future of exhaustive care and how Isabel’s interrupted travel underscores the violent denial of bodily autonomy. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that Elena Knows locates the most potent politics of resistance not in grand gestures, but in the mundane, ordinary and deeply embodied determination to move through the world on one’s own terms.

Keywords: Embodied Resistance, Walking, Everyday Tactics, Biopolitics, Situated Body, Mundane Acts, Female Movement