Reclaiming Orlando, or Why the Woolfian Legacy is Worth Fighting For

Abstract

We are beholden to the postmodernists for their unwavering fidelity to Virginia Woolf’s legacy and the resultant popularity it continues to enjoy. This should no longer be the case. As postmodernism’s import is increasingly outflanked by the enterprises of Slavoj Žižek, Alain Badiou, and the resuscitated Hegel, we ought to rescue Woolf not only from the poststructuralists, but also from herself. I claim that another reading of Woolf is overdue, one which breaks with the general consensus. Such a reading is not a disproving of the latter, but rather an illumination of its concealed underside which it vehemently disavows. I use the philosophy of Slavoj Žižek to illuminate this underside in Woolf’s Orlando, and demonstrate how Woolf shares more with Hegel and Descartes than Deleuze and his disciples. Rather than reading Woolf as a champion of connection, affectivity, and desire, we ought to read her as a writer of abstraction, negativity, and failure.