A feminine look on parity and education in a campus detective novel: Naturaleza casi muerta by Carme Riera

Abstract

Carme Riera follows the Campus Detective Novel mode to provide the reader with a skeptical portrait of university students, professors, and the police force. Casting contemporary events in an incriminating light, Riera depitcs women´s achievements and limitations in the work force, of the crossroads where their personal and their professional lives meet. Working as a team, the female protagonists gain their male counterparts respect and achieve their own professional authority, but not by imposing power, though. They reject absolutes and embrace social justice, equality, tolerance and the potential of education as an essential game changer for society. The author, like Braidotti, embraces sexual difference as a positive force and rejects monolithic truths, especially those which pose a threat to gender parity. Riera, like Bell Hooks, promotes education as the foundation for a more equal, tolerant and ethically compromised society. This also entails recognizing one´s experience and professional merits, like Lorber demands, and a more tolerant and ethical approach, following Spires or Hooks.