The epistemology of the closet in the work of Natalia Borges Polesso and Lygia Fagundes Telles:

the female homosexualities and plural feminities

Abstract

This paper intends a reading of four short stories whose theme is the female homosexualities, “Amora”, “As tias”, “Flor, flores, ferro retorcido”, from the book Amora (2015), by Natalia Borges Polesso and “Uma branca sombra pálida”, from the book A noite escura e mais eu (2009), by Lygia Fagundes Telles, from the perspective of the “epistemology of the closet”, proposed by Eve Sedgwick (2007), and its impact on the life of who, deliberately or not, insurges against the cloister-closet. In all these stories, the characters deal with the insults and the violences, perpetrated by society because of them being who they are; hence, nobody escapes the social eye when coming out, especially when ruled by the strict cis-hetero “law”. Polesso and Telles’ work offer the reader a vision of the modus vivendi of these women and from these fictions a reflection on the factual events within empirical society is possible.