Chantal MAILLARD (b. 1951, Brussels) is a poet and a philosopher. She is the author of many books of poetry, dairies and essay collections. She won the National Prize for Poetry in 2004, for Matar a Platón and in 2008 was awarded both the National Critics' Prize and the Andalusian Critics' Prize for Hilos. After completing her Ph.D. in Philosophy, she specialised in Philosophy and Indian Religions at the Banaras Hindu University.
When she joined the Department of Philosophy of the University of Malaga, an area of studies centred on Aesthetics and the Theory of Arts was created, which functioned under her coordination until her departure. It was an initiative that gave great impetus to comparative studies on Philosophy and Aesthetics and served to promote further fields of work in the domain of intercultural relations.
Her work as professor was abruptly curtailed in 2000 by sudden, serious illness. The neurological disability that resulted from the therapy prescribed prevented her from ever working again. She has focused, since then, on writing. Amputation, the bodily experience of it, has become one of the themes that appear as “marginal notes” in some of her diaries. She raises her voice against any notion of shame or taboo: there is no such thing as monstrosity; just peculiarity. That which makes us appear different also accords the value of singularity.
Three years later, another very harsh experience led to the definitive breaking of her voice: Husos, Notas al margen and Hilos mark a crucial turning point in her work. Language is further questioned. This becomes palpable in the text itself. In the face of the incapacity to give voice to that which transcends the limits of what is commonly accepted, syntax is dismantled, dismembered, de-structured; verbs are impersonalised and identity is shrunk.
None of that could have materialised without the topographic tools deployed from the outset, mirroring her overriding concern with conscience and the observation of mental processes. It is a theme that had already acquired a personal dimension in Diarios indios, and which is further dealt with in Husos and Hilos.
More than advocating for the hybridisation of genre, Maillard's writing is an ode to trans-literal thought. Beyond defying the frontiers between genres, it is the embodiment of e-laboration: woven outside the body of the work, between book and book and the many and diverse ways in which she chooses to intervene in order to present readers not with a woven end-product, a labyrinth or a loom, but a labyrinth in which they can tangibly pursue those threads and that loom, and with them map out their own itinerary.
Díptico de lo oculto is the fruit of her growing interest in sharing interdisciplinary projects, in the domain of plastic arts as well as on stage, in film and through the medium of music.
Chantal Maillard lives and works between Barcelona and Malaga (Spain).
When she joined the Department of Philosophy of the University of Malaga, an area of studies centred on Aesthetics and the Theory of Arts was created, which functioned under her coordination until her departure. It was an initiative that gave great impetus to comparative studies on Philosophy and Aesthetics and served to promote further fields of work in the domain of intercultural relations.
Her work as professor was abruptly curtailed in 2000 by sudden, serious illness. The neurological disability that resulted from the therapy prescribed prevented her from ever working again. She has focused, since then, on writing. Amputation, the bodily experience of it, has become one of the themes that appear as “marginal notes” in some of her diaries. She raises her voice against any notion of shame or taboo: there is no such thing as monstrosity; just peculiarity. That which makes us appear different also accords the value of singularity.
Three years later, another very harsh experience led to the definitive breaking of her voice: Husos, Notas al margen and Hilos mark a crucial turning point in her work. Language is further questioned. This becomes palpable in the text itself. In the face of the incapacity to give voice to that which transcends the limits of what is commonly accepted, syntax is dismantled, dismembered, de-structured; verbs are impersonalised and identity is shrunk.
None of that could have materialised without the topographic tools deployed from the outset, mirroring her overriding concern with conscience and the observation of mental processes. It is a theme that had already acquired a personal dimension in Diarios indios, and which is further dealt with in Husos and Hilos.
More than advocating for the hybridisation of genre, Maillard's writing is an ode to trans-literal thought. Beyond defying the frontiers between genres, it is the embodiment of e-laboration: woven outside the body of the work, between book and book and the many and diverse ways in which she chooses to intervene in order to present readers not with a woven end-product, a labyrinth or a loom, but a labyrinth in which they can tangibly pursue those threads and that loom, and with them map out their own itinerary.
Díptico de lo oculto is the fruit of her growing interest in sharing interdisciplinary projects, in the domain of plastic arts as well as on stage, in film and through the medium of music.
Chantal Maillard lives and works between Barcelona and Malaga (Spain).