The I and the same: lesbian love in Adrienne Rich’s poetry

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the construction of the subjectivity of the lesbian subject in the poems “Splitting” (1978) and Twenty-one love poems (1976) by the North-American poet, Adrienne Rich. Dissociated from the social representations that assume that the female body is a mere male object and going beyond the notion that the sexual possession of the woman is a factor that maintains the social order, Rich’s lyrical self is then the subject formed by and in the difference. Today, with the multiplicity of values, senses and representations, the centralized and static female subject loses her space to a contradictory, dynamic and fragmented figure, the result of her experiences. In this perspective, it is understood that Rich’s poems discussed here constitute a space for reflection on hegemonic discourse and social practices guided by Western culture. Thus, it is intended to articulate the speech of the American poet to those of theoreticians such as Michel Foucault (2015), Tânia Swain (2010) and Adrienne Rich (1979, 1986, 2010), in this way showing that with the growing discussion of this construction not only a new perception of the world is promoted, but also a change in the framework of references and criteria in the evaluation of social phenomena.