‘La Carezza Incompuita’: queer aesthetics, desire and censorship in Ticchioni’s 'Il suicidio di un esteta'

Il suicidio di un esteta, a novel by the unknown author Pier Leone Ticchioni, was censored by the Fascist Regime in 1930 on account of its representation of same-sex desire. Drawing on original archival research, and informed by the thought of Heather Love and Judith Halberstam, the article analyzes the text as an example of queer failure. It focusses on the representation of queer aestheticism, contextualized in relation to contemporary discourses of homosexuality, and examines the correspondence surrounding the censorship of the novel, arguing that Ticchioni’s ‘failure’ nevertheless constitutes a disruptively queer text