Perfect Beasts | An opportunity to reflect on violence against children

Abstract

Lucio Dupuy was five years old when his mother and stepmother beat him to death. Two years later, the Argentine justice system sentenced Magdalena Espósito Valenti and her partner, Abigail Páez, to life imprisonment. In Bestias perfectas, a recent release from Emecé Publishing, Mariana Komiseroff revisits the case of Lucio Dupuy and immerses herself in the unsettling thickness left in the wake of the crime: a mire composed of pain, violence, unanswered questions, and collective silences.

Komiseroff —a lesbian writer based in La Pampa— breaks into that mute zone, inhabits the vital space of not understanding, and, above all, poses challenging questions: How do we think about violence when it is not perpetrated by men against women? What happens to us as writers, researchers, and journalists when the perpetrators are lesbians, feminists, and activists for abortion rights? How do we tell a story that cuts through us so painfully?