NARRATIVES OF WOMEN AND LESBIANITY: SPEECHES FROM THE "SPACE OFF"

Abstract

The aim of this work is to discuss the literature written by women in a decentralized way to what is culturally attributed to the feminine and the very notion of woman, which also compulsorily supposes heterosexuality. The critical reading proposed has the basic concept of "space off" (DE LAURETIS, 1994) to think the speeches that inhabit spaces inside and outside the dominant culture, the "blind spot" implicit but invisible in a position of contradiction and resistance capable of (re)constructing and (re)inscripting the gender. Initially, I seek to demonstrate why  the notion of feminine is here problematized, opting for thinking literature written by women and about lesbianity as a discourse that comes from this alternative space, from the breaches of the hegemonic discourse, threatening its stability. Then the work Thérèse et Isabelle (2000) by Violette Leduc is here analyzed to think about the possibilities in the literature of a discourse, whose theme is not only an experience of women, but the relationship between two girls, articulated in a text that explores the desiring body in its plurality. Such work is identified as belonging to the “lesbian continuum” thought by Adrienne Rich (2010), whose very existence is a way to break the hegemonic discourse through the fissures breaking out inside the discourse itself