Alcira Soust Scaffo: A Poetic Praxis. Results of a Research

Abstract

This article describes a research process on the Uruguayan poet Alcira Soust Scaffo at the intersection between literature and psychoanalysis, and summarises findings that emerge from reading her work on the intertwining of the clinical, the aesthetic and the political. The text is structured in three parts, intertwined with poetic fragments by the author that accompany and expand on the theoretical reflection. The first part addresses the research process and its methodological drifts, framed within a “border epistemology” that consists of positioning oneself in the space that links different areas of knowledge, rather than applying knowledge from one discipline as auxiliary inputs subordinate to the development of another. The second offers a profile of Alcira Soust Scaffo, presented as a magician of poetic words, whose life and work challenge the limits of customary practices. The third proposes a reading of the research results, formulated as minimal truths: flashes of meaning that, without claiming to be exhaustive, illuminate areas of experience where the poetic, the political and the clinical overlap.