Narrating the Transnational Trajectories and Transgender Performances of the Sworn Virgin

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores how two recent configurations of the Albanian sworn virgin prompt a reflection on the intersection of transgender discourses with questions of transnational mobility. Elvira Dones’s novel Vergine giurata and its eponymous cinematic adaptation (directed by Laura Bispuri) imagine in diverging ways the material and symbolic disruptions that occur when this tribally sanctioned figure leaves Albania for another nation. Novel and film suggest to different degrees how this distinctive transgender figure challenges binary regimes of heteronormativity and the power-knowledge systems underpinning them, revealing contrasting investments in the possibilities of the sworn virgin's integration into the respective migratory settings.