About the author:
Olga B. Matich, PhD, Professor Emerita, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California (United States), Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
E-mail:
Abstract:
The article considers the subjectness of Zinaida Gippius in relation to the performativity of gender and sex, in part from the perspective of Judith Butler’s theory in Gender Trouble (1990), including of parody as a subversive device, based on the destabilization of the socio-symbolic binary of gender. These questions are discussed in the context of Gippius’s erotic theory and her life-creating assertions regarding eros and sexual identity in her poetry as well as life practices, in which the poet often assumes an ambivalent and paradoxical position. In conjunction with these topics the essay considers her poetic images based on metaphors of traditional women’s work: thread, weaving, and reweaving.
