Speaking through the Body, Narrating through the Image: Parrhesiastic and Dialogical Practices in Paula Bonet’s Los diarios de la anguila

Abstract

In Los diarios de la anguila (Anagrama, 2022), Paula Bonet integrates image and text in a hybrid work situated between the intimate diary, travel journal and artist’s book. Through the theoretical frameworks of parrhesia (Foucault) and dialogism (Bakhtin), this article examines how Bonet’s work constructs a testimonial and political aesthetics. The materiality of the book, combined with epistles, notes, intertexts, plastic techniques, and fragmentary writing, creates a polyphonic structure that transcends confessionality, thereby expanding the conceptual and formal possibilities of the artist’s book as a site for critical dialogue and social transformation.