Transnarrativ och transtemporalitet: En komparativ analys av Virginia Woolfs "Orlando" och Paul B. Preciados "Orlando: My Political Autobiography"

Sammanfattning

The aim of this thesis is to study how the trans narrative is portrayed in relation to trans-temporality in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), which together forms the trans identity of Orlando. This trans identity of Orlando is then used by Paul B. Preciado in the film Orlando: My Political Autobiography (2023) to write a new, expansive trans narrative. To study the relation between the trans identities portrayed in these two works, the following questions are posed: How are the trans narrative tropes: “I have always been”, “wrong body”, operation scenes, and mirror scenes, portrayed in the novel and in the film? What purpose does trans-temporality serve in terms of understanding the trans identities portrayed in both works? How does Preciado use Woolf’s Orlando to write a new trans narrative? A comparative method has been applied to analyze the novel and the film through the lens of a “master trans narrative” described by Jay Prosser. Trans-temporality in connection to transsexuality is also studied. The analysis of the trans narrative tropes in Orlando concludes that Orlando’s gender identity is a non-binary one and that her identity is not tied to the body. The trans-temporality and its significance to the trans identity is best portrayed in Orlando’s seven-day-slumber and in his poem “The Oak Tree”. It is the transtemporal identity and the trans identity of Orlando that is then used by Preciado in the portrayal of the film’s several trans people as Orlando. Preciado uses Orlando to criticize and rewrite several of the master trans narrative’s tropes; both those portrayed in the novel as well as those in the master trans narrative sanctioned by the law and healthcare systems. Preciado’s new, expansive trans narrative is one where trans people, whose tropes or narrative do not fit with this master narrative, also belong.