Experimenting with the Unspeakable: Lesbian Dissimulation in Alice Ceresa’s La figlia prodiga

Abstract

The article proposes a reading of Alice Ceresa's La figlia prodiga (1967) through the lenses of the dissimulation of lesbianism and the subversion of the patriarchal symbolic order.While most critics have so far either ignored lesbianism or rejected its relevance to the interpretation of the figure of the prodigal daughter, I link the text's formal experimentation to the question of the unspeakability of female homosexuality.I take the cue from Teresa de Lauretis' groundbreaking reflections on Ceresa (DE LAURETIS 1996) to argue that, while it may not be necessary to include lesbianism within the concept of prodigality, much of the text loses its potency by not doing so.In fact, the prodigal daughter is not the lesbian, but rather a signifier that becomes available to represent a position lacking representation, which is lesbianism.The article focuses in particular on three elements that shed light on the original poetics of La figlia prodiga: first, its metaliterary reflection, which originates in the question of how to say something that cannot be said, or for which no adequate words exist, or which escapes representation; second, the metaliterary reflection is connected to a precise theme, i.e. female homosexuality and the subversion of the heteropatriarchy; and third, in response to the metaliterary question regarding the affordances of literature, La figlia prodiga constitutes a highly experimental work, which deconstructs established narrative models also by fragmenting the text through line breaks, which introduce a prosodic element leaning towards orality, opening up a potentiality of expression otherwise denied in the text.32

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