Articles for DWF
Reviews for DWF
Books reviewed by DWF
Articles for DWF
The enigma. Communication as power, 1976, n. 1, pp. 77-93
The article submits the interpersonal relationships in a tale from Dostoyevski "Letters from the underworld" to a critical analysis. The interpretation given found support at a seminar on the same subject in the Psychology department in the School of Humanities at Bologna University in 1975-76.
The analysis concentrates on the methods of communication and of non-communication, the use made by the characters - a man and a woman who in the end commits suicide - of the spoken word and of silence, to achieve power or in self-defence. The text is examined at many levels and from various angles, as was indeed Dostoyevski's own intention. Indeed Dostoyevski's work lends itself particularly well to the most modern methods of psychological analysis because each of his characters is portrayed as a complex of relationships.
Marina Mizzau attempts to demonstrate, using Dostoyevski's novel for her examples, that an individual's use of communication or silence is not accidental but is conditioned in large measure by his or her sex, or by what society has made of that sex. So, according to the author this text has to be read in terms of domination and subordination. Between this man and woman communication is impossible because power has deformed and falsified their relationship.
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Mirror, image, diary, 1981, n. 16. Suppl., pp. 18-24
Considering how foreign her image feels to her when she catches it by chance in a mirror, so that she almost does not recognize it, Mizzau explores the three aspects of specular reflection, of the construction of an image of the self, and of autobiographical narration in women's diaries.
The image a mirror presents is incomplete, without the seeming wholeness an other appears to have when we look at her/him. The psychic image of the self is also incomplete, not because of a lack of introspection but due to its very complexity, having to do both with our self-perception and with the opinions about ourself communicated by others.
Finally, self-representation in diaries - Mizzau referes to the diaries of Sibilla Aleramo, Sofja Tolstoi, and Ana·is Nin - often takes the form of an answer to the look of the other, of man. The same his true for the novels-confessions of Erica Jong and Marie Cardinal, self-representations which often seem to cater to commercialised versions of feminist ideology.
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Ironical seduction, 1993, n. 18-19, pp. 11-14
With examples taken from the language of the media and advertising, Mizzau means to show how the emphasis on women's seductiveness, now as ever, reveals a devaluation of women and their reification. Pretending that there is a new ironical slant in the use of seduction is simply a way to try and give it a patina of modernity, without really modifying the culturally created images of women.
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Reviews for DWF
LEWISON Ludwig, Il caso Crump, Milano, Bompiani, 1980
rev. by Marina Mizzau, 1981, n. 16. Suppl., pp. 127-128
STEAD Christina, Sabba familiare, Milano, Garzanti, 1979
rev. by Marina Mizzau, 1981, n. 16. Suppl., pp. 127-128
Books reviewed by DWF
MIZZAU Marina, Eco e Narciso. Parole e silenzi nel conflitto uomo-donna,
Torino, Boringhieri, 1979
rev. by Adriana Chemello, 1980, n. 14, pp. 176-177