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Articles for DWF
The Absolute Object - How absurd!, 1981, n. 16. Suppl., pp. 10-17
Refusing a synthetic and unique definition of self-representation, Violi identifies the specificity of writing in its allusiveness: for the writing subject, words are a means to retrace their lived experiences, to recreate them in a different order which is not the one of immediate perception.
Through a consciously accepted "distance", as Virginia Woolf says, a written confession or memory - a diary, for example - can become a "text". Violi goes on to explore this specific feature analysing the difference between consciousness raising (in Italian, self-awareness), women's practise of self-representation, and the psychoanalytic practise. The former is regulated by a principle of analogical identification, and does not consciously assume the mechanisms informing it; the latter elaborates a "loving distance" with one's lived experience, thus allowing one to recover it.
Finally, Violi stresses the importance of reading texts not so much in search of one supposedly feminine/female way of writing, but rather focussing on the writer's point of view.
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Experiencing individuality, and belonging to a gender: a question of "style"?,
1999, n. 42-43, pp. 42-55
According to the author, individuality has been kept at the margins of philosophical thought, confined in the private sphere, as the unsayable of culture; taking oneself as one's starting point, the founding practise of feminist thought, has questioned anew this exclusion of individuality.
Drawing upon her previous work, where she posited sexual difference as a universal of signification, one of the deep appositions which structure and originate meaning, Violi looks at the complexities of a world where differences and multiplicity problematise and displace one's sense of belonging.
She then tries to define a linguistic equivalent of individuality, re-thinking the concept of style as the specific, unique form of each individual's relationship with language; finally, she suggests a "style of gender", characterised not by normative regularities but rather by a shared horizon for women's words.
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Reviews for DWF
BRAIDOTTI ROSI, MAZZANTI ROBERTA, SAPEGNO SERENA, TAGLIAVINI ANNAMARIA, Baby
Boomers. Vite parallele dagli anni Cinquanta ai cinquant'anni, Firenze,
Giunti 2003
rev. by Patrizia Violi, 2003, n. 58-59, pp. 88-91
Books reviewed by DWF
VIOLI Patrizia, L'infinito singolare. Considerazioni sulle differenze sessuali
nel linguaggio, Verona, Essedue, 1986
rev. by Patrizia Magli, 1986, n. 3, pp. 124-125