(Obs)Cene: the Place for Female Desire in Gustav Klimt and Clarice Lispector

Abstract

This article underlines the place of (obs)cene into which female desire is persistently displaced. It sets up a dialogue between pictorial and literary language, taking account of the compositional economy in Gustav Klimt’s “The three ages of the woman” and of Clarice Lispector’s short story “Ruído de passos” (Sound of steps). It contemplates the horizons of senses, aggregated by the circulation and reception of both objects, especially when it comes to the autonomy of the detail in Klimt’s painting. The discussion further suggests effects of gender-specific displacements in contemporary cultural criticism, in view of open-ended agendas on inclusion. It is sustained that gender perspectives shed decisive light upon the interpretive act and prove crucial to the development of notorious philosophical contributions by discourse theoreticians like Bakhtin.