Abstract

The article aims to thematise the opaque relationship between bodies and the sphere of written knowledge and to propose an interpretation of the social actors involved in the world of reading from a gender perspective. Firstly, the examination will start by reflecting on the image of the female librarian, whose stereotyped traits, repeated over time, may indicate a device for neutralising epistemic anxieties. This stereotype reinforces an image of the feminine that establishes its own space of reference, thus reproducing a Western idea of knowledge linked to power dynamics. The paper will then investigate how the model of the female reader is differently constructed from that of the male reader and how a book is a cultural object through which gender differentiation can silently take place. Lastly, the theoretical analysis will highlight how some representations and figures close to the world of reading are socially constructed and how the book, far from being a neutral and passive artifact, plays a critical role in gender socialisation