ABSTRACT
This chapter describes Clarice Lispector's novel O lustre in order to show how race, and racist thinking, is embedded in the psyche of the protagonist Virginia Woolf from a very early stage. It contends that according to O lustre, in Brazil during the period that the novel was written and published, performing whiteness was a precondition for having a personal identity. Lispector's characters plunge into crisis in order to protect themselves, precisely to preserve their power of agency: their own subjectivity. In this specific novel, O lustre, Virginia needs to expel non-white aspects of herself in order to construct an acceptable personal identity. She needs to construct her subjectivity according to implicit rules determining what is modern, which, in turn, conforms to an idea of what it is to be a national subject. Belonging to the city is another important aspect in the construction of Virginia's personal identity.
