Author’s Intention and Autofiction in Reinaldo Arenas’ Poetics

Abstract

The objective of this article is to reflect on the conception of autofiction as a form of discourse and the tension that is established with the author’s intention and the reception processes. The article analyzes different narrative processes in the work of the Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas that operate in an autofictional reading of his work as a whole. Starting from the thesis of the existence of a final phase of writing in which the author’s intention focuses on the construction of a self-referential reading of all his work, the article reviews the textual practices that rewrite and position his literature under a necessary autofictional perspective. In this way, the article reflects on the operability of both the author’s intention and the reception processes in the construction of a self-referential literature.