Capri Hermafrodita, un esperimento culturale oltre l’eteronormatività

Abstract

The paper reports, even if fragmentarily, in a multidisciplinary perspective, with a broad view of historical and cultural background between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the stories of some “uranisti” and “amazzoni” living in Capri. For them the Siren Land by Homer is a unique microcosm of homosexual liberation, where rediscovering freedom and renewing the communion with the original spirit of nature. So Capri becomes also the Hermafrodita, transformed thanks to the presence of these special travelers and writers in a creative en plein air laboratory, where languages, cultures, and sexualities meet and merge into the dream island despite the heteronormativity of contemporary society. From Wilde to Fersen, from Douglas to Mackenzie and others, at the turn of the nineteenth century, the island is a natural theater of narrations, sometimes realistic, sometimes fantastic, creating a unique cultural experiment about identity, gender and sexuality beyond the heteronormative constraints.

Keywords: Cultural studies, Gender studies, homosexual identity, heteronormativity, Capri.