Whatever Singularity: Queering The ‘Quodlibet’ In The Well Of Loneliness And Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality

Year: 2023

DOI:

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Whatever Singularity: Queering The ‘Quodlibet’ In The Well Of Loneliness And Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Semih Yararoglu

ABSTRACT: 

The aim of this paper is to propose a hypothetical community for queer people of 20th century England depicted in two novels: Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness (1928) and Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) through Agamben’s idea of community. This study also intends to investigate the issue of the queer people in the 20thcentury, while demonstrating that the oppression of homosexual people has not changed despite the fact that one of the two novels is written at the beginning and the other at the end of the twentieth century.

Suggesting a community to the queer people via Agamben’s whatever singularity, this paper attempts to examine the exclusion of the lesbian characters as depicted in the novels either by the society or the family. In a nutshell, the present study offers an alternative conception of society and/or community for the queer people in the aforementioned novels through Agamben’s notion of the whatever singularity, which welcomes each individual within the society, at the same time accepting them as they are (telquale) since every person is lovable (quodlibet).

keywords: Whatever Singularity, Agamben, Threshold, Radclyffe Hall, Jeanette Winterson, 20th Century England