Recycling/Upcycling the Iconic Woolf? Negotiating Woolf as a Literary and Feminist Icon in Kabe Wilson’s Of One Woman or So, by Olivia N’Gowfri
Résumé
In his literary artwork entitled Of One Woman or So, by Olivia N'Gowfri, Kabe Wilson recycled A Room of One’s Own into a portrait of the artist as a young working-class lesbian and mixed race woman, the autodiegetic narrator and embedded creator of which, Olivia N'Gowfri, battles with Woolf's tutelary status as she reads A Room of One's Own for the first time. This paper argued that in laying emphasis on Olivia’s ambivalent (af)filiation with Woolf while foregrounding Woolf’s status of feminist and literary icon, Of One Woman or So, by Olivia N'Gowfri recycles, or perhaps even upcycles, the iconic Woolf that has been constituted by readers, literary critics and popular culture.