O amor em tempos distópicos: corpos utópicos em The Stone Gods, de Jeanette Winterson

Abstract

Utopian and dystopian fictions by women, most notably the ones written in the four last decades, offer a privileged space for the manifestations of (varied and paradoxical) meta-utopianisms, or critical utopianisms, with clear gender inflexions. Aiming to reflect on the critical and utopian dimensions of recent feminist thought in its implications for cultural gender constructions, more specifically looking at the dystopic novel The stone gods (2007), by British author Jeanette Winterson, this reading focuses on the metaphors regarding the representations of dystopian and utopian bodies, recurring themes in contemporary feminist discourses. The representations of bodies in Winterson´s fiction are observed in their dystopian – object and disciplined bodies (GROSZ, 2000) - and also utopian dimensions – hybrid, resisting, post-gender bodies. The present reading also reflects on the (no)place woven by the lovers´ discourse (BARTHES, 1991), the space uniting the protagonists Billie´s and Spike´s bodies, as the most perceptible utopian dimension in this futuristic dystopia in the revision, accomplished by Winterson, of one of the oldest, most recurring and most cherished themes in literature: love.