Tecnologia e Ecologia in Orlando

Abstract

If Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction addresses to the fact that the mechanical reproduction devalues the aura of a work of art, what are we to think of the value of art in the age of digital revolution and the impact of a huge environmental crisis. Pamela Caughie, reflecting upon Benjamin’s work, edited the book Virginia Woolf in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, a collection of essays discussing on the relations between Woolf and Walter Benjamin on the interface modernity and technology.  The aim of this article is analyzing the novel Orlando, observing how the author delas with ecology and technology in her text geo/biographic, taking Elizabeth Waller’s expression in her interpretation of the novel.  Woolf portrays in the great majority of her novels different kinds of seasons, as Peter Adkins shows in his text on Woolf and the Anthropocene. The theoretical and critic framework of this paper counts with the assumptions of Peter Adkins, Bonnie Scott and Derek Ryan. Donna Harraway, When Species Meet, is also a fundamental text to understand the intersections between ecology and technology in Woolf’s novel. Besides that, Virginia Woolf and the Natural World, a collection of essays which discusses the main theme of this article, which is exploring the representation of nature in the novel Orlando, by Virginia Woolf. The main character Orlando is not the only one changing sex, but above all, the Earth, the climate and the animals are all suffering a great transformation along the three hundred Years of this Journey, as we can notice the great changes in ecological and technological terms in the novel. Thus, the main question is trying to grasp how Woolf locates her main character in deep contact with the environment, the human and non-human and all the changes around him/her.