Identità oscillatorie e trasmutazioni di genere. Performatività e androginia in Orlando di Virginia Woolf

Abstract

This study investigates the representation of the body and gender (understood as a sexual category) in Orlando (1928) by Virginia Woolf The analysis is conducted, mainly, in the light of the concept of performance (mostly in the Schechnerian drift) and of gender performativity (in the Butlerian sense and in line with her deconstructionist orientation about the categories of identity) This last theoretical trace, in particular, since it questions the traditional concept of gender, helps us to rethink and rework the vision of the body and gender of the main interpreter of the Woolfian novel: Orlando In fact, in a sort of androgy- nous communion, he breaks down and transcends the orthodoxies of the masculine and the feminine, renouncing categorizations, monolithic constructs, to open his own imagination to new eventualities of existence.