Queering and Politicising the Fairy Tale in Italy: Oscar Wilde in Conversation with Federico Zappino

This paper explores the radical and queer potential of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales by placing them in conversation with the work of an Italian philosopher, Federico Zappino. The parables of self-sacrifice and recognition offered by Wilde in his fairy tales will be shown to be stories of self-mutilation which fall short of guaranteeing any lasting change within the combined oppressive systems of capitalism and what Zappino terms ‘heterosexuality’. Far from being tales of remote realms disconnected from reality, Wilde’s fairy tales queer the relation between text on the one hand and genre, reader, ideology on the other. Thus, Wilde realises the queer ideality that many queer theorists regard as a paramount objective in the collective struggle against oppression.