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donnawomanfemme
Roma, Editrice coop. UTOPIA, 1986-
Projects, Project Making, 1986, n. 2
EDITORIAL, Projects, Project Making, pp. 5-10
Three questions, pp. 11-12
MORETTI Maria Luisa
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 13-15
PAPALEO Adriana
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 16-17
MURARO Luisa
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 18-23
POMERANZI Bianca Maria
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 24-25
D'AMELIA Marina
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 26-28
TATAFIORE Roberta
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 29-30
BORGHI Liana
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 31-34
DONINI Elisabetta
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 35-37
BIMBI Franca
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 38-40
REALE Elvira
[Projects, Project Making], pp. 41-44
BRAIDOTTI Rosi
I see a child in the course of time, pp. 45-50
FRONTALI Marina
A glance from the laboratory, pp. 51-56
RICCIARDI Cloti
The basic material is pleasure, pp. 57-69
CHIURLOTTO Vania
Profits and losses, pp. 71-75
ZANCAN Marina
Literary writing: signs and marks of a project on oneself,
pp. 76-86
BONO Paola
The other word of Angela Carter, pp. 87-104
GERRARD Nicci
In England too…, pp. 105-109
Figures of the sexual difference, pp. 111-122
FOX KELLER Evelyn
Feminism and science, pp. 123-135
EDITORIAL, Projects, Project Making, pp. 5-10
The movement had a common drive and vision underlying its projects, which in turn gave strength to the movement itself as well as to the lives of individual women. Perhaps it is now possible to have a multiplicity of drives and visions, underlying the creation of multiple projects which do not deny differences but contribute to each woman's life in her search for meaning.
A "gendered project making", pertaining to consciousness, to the subject's political purpose, as distinct from the visibility of individual projects, always possible and certainly expected by social organisation.
Some women are asked questions related to the introductory statement.
MORETTI Maria Luisa, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 13-15
The author, of the Rome bookshop "Al tempo ritrovato", tells of the way in which her personal project unfolded within a shared project making, then taking form in the concrete project of the bookshop: this implies challenging the publishing market, a different relationship with customers and listening to a new public who do not have gender belonging as a starting point, but rather acknowledge it as a possible outcome.
PAPALEO Adriana, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 16-17
A businesswoman from Catanzaro Udi, the author talks about her work projects and how they express an overall life plan, even though the latter can't be reduced to them. The plan's purpose is to give other women the possibility of realizing projects on the basis of the circulating of experience, within a shared project making which enables the visibility of all, beyond isolation and disappearance.
MURARO Luisa, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 18-23
The author (a philosopher, a lecturer at Verona University, and a member of the Women's Bookshop of Milan) claims that the prevailing tendency to regard women's social endeavours as a way of being together instead of fighting for more significant results is the outcome of a difficulty to adopt a female measure of judgement, of negotiating one's own freedom in the first place with the mother and other women.
On the basis of personal experience in endeavours in which she had a share, the author maintains that what is, now more than ever, needed is "not company, not affection, but female respondance, an enhancing mirror" in forms still to be envisioned. In this sense what is required is a collective subject.
POMERANZI Bianca Maria, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 24-25
The author, an officer of the Lega Nazionale delle Cooperative (National League of Cooperatives), sketches her history of lesbo-feminist. She complains about the diminished possibilities of communicating and claims to be interested in the current political debate "only if it offers the possibility of building a strategy of intervention in the world". She interprets the relationship between individual project making and collective subject as the desirable outcome of the meeting of different identities or itineraries or projects.
D'AMELIA Marina, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 26-28
The author (a lecturer at Rome University, historian, on the "Memoria" editorial board) expresses doubts on the questions and their generality. "Gendered project making shouldn't continue to be a general idea. It must be specified in order for it to be used by every woman as an instrument of self revelation, of refusal of oppression, of correction of particular forms of alienation or injustice".
TATAFIORE Roberta, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 29-30
The author, a journalist on the "Noi Donne" editorial board, declares her total lack of interest at present for the collective subject in its generality and for the reasoning the questions further on the whole. She is now interested in issues concerning commercial sex (prostitution, pornography, sexual industry in general) and, insofar as it is possible, the encounter with women who explicitly practice it.
BORGHI Liana, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 31-34
The author (lecturer at Bologna University, expert in American studies, of the Women's Bookshop of Florence and of Estro publishers) is convinced that lesbianism "is not simply a sexual practice; it's a way of living, impossible to practice without a community".
She then goes on to tell how she has tried, through time, to build different ways of meeting for lesbian women. She dwells on what went on from this point of view within the Women's Bookshop of Florence and on the relationship between her political activity and her academic work.
DONINI Elisabetta, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 35-37
The author (lecturer at Turin University, physicist and historian of science, and a member of the women's cultural center "Livia Liverani Donini") underscores the difference between a project, "which takes shape as its contents, instruments and aims are specified", and project making, "which is only possible in regard to a subject and contributes to its moulding, while making its meaning clear".
Her hope for the present is that plurality of subjects will not be suffocated by the dynamics of conflicts. She establishes a relationship between differentiated project making and the perspectives which inspire many cultures of complexity in different contexts.
BIMBI Franca, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 38-40
The author, a lecturer at Padua University, sociologist; member of the secretarial board of the Milan "Center for historical studies on women's liberation movement in Italy" (Centro di studi storici sul movimento di liberazione della donna in Italia), advances the possibility that the meaning of the two terms "project" and "project making" diverged through time; she personally felt she should to let go the idea of a project/progress, originating in Enlightenment and Marxism.
This led her on a more uncertain track, with plenty of personal and collective questioning, where, with the passion of gendered project making "she advances trying to know and live herself in her entirety; in her affections, work, body and mind".
REALE Elvira, [Projects, Project Making], pp. 41-44
The author, who works at the women's mental health service she founded herself in the Local Health Unit (Unità sanitaria locale - Usl) n. 39 in Naples, recounts the birth, in 1977, of a project aimed at modifying psychiatric intervention, fuelled by a reconsideration of women's condition.
The first core of the group were workers of the Naples psychiatric hospital, whose purpose was to enter their institutional work environment with their sexual difference by acting on two levels: transformation of their own role of workers, transformation of the condition of the women patients in hospital. At the origin of the project were the sentiment of belonging to a collective subject evolving through time until the aim is reached, and the need to pass on to other women a wealth of information and experience.
BRAIDOTTI Rosi, I see a child in the course of time, pp. 45-50
In a formally fragmented way Rosi Braidotti
expresses the actual paradox of feminist thought that is "all in this desire
of research and collective elaboration of a new definition of women's subjective
individuality. The line of reasoning lies between two verbs: the imperfect and
the past conditional tense.
"Was" is the tense of the little girl, as the image of someone who availed her self of a heritage without a will; of a girl that, without knowing it, was already a woman. Brought into a system of signs unable to represent her, before feminism, she was, like all the others, a voice that talked in the desert. "Had been" is the tense of what is possible, that saves the past but also expresses the desire, the refusal to accept certainties and the predictions made in the sixties.
Rosi Braidotti concludes with an indication for
this passage in the void that we are living in: deny a negative history and
a passive past; give an historic turn to women's experience towards assertiveness
and authoritativeness.
FRONTALI Marina, A glance from the laboratory, pp. 51-56
The author analyses the research activity in a scientific laboratory basing her work on concrete examples: this activity is characterised by programming, anticipating, planning with a logical and practical link that can't be broken. This kind of work requires a private life organized functionally to the research activity and creates a situation solidly structured with no space for the analysis of one's own subjectivity.
In the hypothesis - that still needs to be verified - that there is a female identity in scientific production and that it has or can develop in the future it's own role, the author offers a few hints for discussion. The first one concerns the relationship between the extreme competition that characterizes the world of scientific research and the women's attitude working in it at different levels.
The second one concerns the possibility of a specific women's mark in their scientific contributions. The author thinks that it would be more useful and meaningful for women scientists to analyze whether there is a line between the actual research production realized autonomously by women scientists and the different experiences that women have made in different fields.
RICCIARDI Cloti, The basic material is pleasure, pp. 57-69
Cloti Ricciardi is an artist. Even if she acknowledges the function of criticism, she explains why there is a permanent conflict between the words and the work of art, and the political nature of this conflict.
She asks herself if the image can be identified according to sexual difference and she points out the necessity to dissipate some misunderstandings - that even feminist culture has - so the problem can be correctly analyzed. In a word we should analyze in depth the "impossibility of thinking of ourselves as a strong subject able to interact authoritatively with reality so as to be involved in the process of creating/enjoying an artistic work".
Cloti Ricciardi concludes expressing her own reasons for creating images, starting from her own relationship with life.
CHIURLOTTO Vania, Profits and losses, pp. 71-75
A private and public life itinerary marks the structure of a personal library. There is a meaning in the presence and the absence, in the preferences for and the outcasts of certain authors, that show up across time.
The author uses a subjective due to analyze the project peculiar to a collective way to emancipation as it has been experienced in a women association, the changes occurred along the way and the cultural attitude of this new generation which exalts sociability among women without repressing the intellectual and political characteristics of each one.
ZANCAN Marina, Literary writing: signs and marks of a project on oneself,
pp. 76-86
Literary writing and literary texts are a mean for representing our own perception of life and the project on oneself. This statement is particularly true for women, who have always been excluded from a system of signs and values and therefor from the tradition of the literary system; to speak up in public, to write, have been for a long time a social act of insubordination. This is precisely why women's writing needs verification in depth and complex hypothesis of interpretation.
M. Zancan starts by making two statements regarding women's presence in Italian literature: one about the quantity and the other about the quality. The small number of presences has to be related to the absences and the cruel exclusions made in different ways in different periods of history. As to quality, in order to avoid classifying women's texts under more eccentricities and minor literature, when reading and interpretating these textes, we have to be conscious of the differences due to the sexual differences of the writing subject. We don't suggest any a priori revaluation but the reconstruction of a woman's cultural tradition.
M. Zancan grounds her statements examining, as an example, certain significative women of Italian literature: for the very beginning, Caterina da Siena; for Renaissance Vittoria Colonna, Gaspara Stampa, Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi; for contemporary age, Sibilla Aleramo.
BONO Paola, The other word of Angela Carter, pp. 87-104
The text is a critical forward to Angela Carter's long interview, and also, a short independent essay on reading as a metaphor of the relationship with the world. The author recognizes in herself two attitudes, both "partisan" and clearly subjective: an oppositive reading and a positive one.
Oppositive to "the identification of one self in symbolic forms that require the blindness of my intelligence, the disregard of my experience, my investment in images based on the denial of myself"; positive because it rejects hurried judgements on women's thought and work, in order to investigate what, on the other hand, an initial refusal really means. Paola Bono investigates the ambiguity of the fascination/refusal of this particular work: The Passion of the New Eve.
She verifies once more that the interview - in her illusion of authenticity - says nothing more about the project which is by now totally said in this book and she traces out the allegorical writing of the English author concluding that The Passion raises the question on the being and the becoming of oneself, on identity and representation: "Reading it another time The Passion of the New Eve became my possible passion, and the answers that I thought I had found in it became questions I asked myself beyond the text".
GERRARD Nicci, In England too…, pp. 105-109
She tells of the preparation and birth of the cultural periodical "Women's Review" in the context of many different more or less successful English feminist magazines. She then briefly analyses the dynamics in women's enterprises, in order to point out that women's investment always has had a pragmatic and affective character. A positive outcome springs from "the acquired consciousness that one is often stronger than one realizes".
Figures of the sexual difference, pp. 111-122
In this essay, the authors - Giovanna Borrello, Laura Capobianco, Simona Marino, Angela Putino, Giovanna Senatore, Silvana Totaro, philosophers of the Cultural cooperative "Transizione", in Naples - sinthetize the issues of a year of work; during this year they had three meetings with "Diotima" in Verona and the Cultural Centre V. Woolf in Rome, who have centered their reflections on sexual difference, so as it is defined by L. Irigaray.
They point out first of all the dangerousness of each philosophical theory based on structured conceptual categories - as the subject, the unity, the being - even when they apply to the foundation of the feminine; as far as Nineteenth century philosophy is concerned, they point out the necessity of not reducing women's thought to an aspect of the issue "crisis of the subject".
They propose the concept of "the figure of the difference" explaining the plurality of meanings, the passages and the crossings that are made possible. The "resemblance" and its figures has been the foundation of male thought (that pretends to be neutral); we need to give meanings to the "figure of the difference" and we can do it only among women.
Quoting L. Irigaray the authors adopt the term "mucous" ad an image of opening and they end up with the image - which is both another "figure of the difference" and a political proposal: "a wide stitched net: dia-logue.
We think this is the way to transformation, dialogue, the way to appraise the "dia", the intermediary, the difference. Difference that, therefore, becomes a proposal of care, reciprocity, net and, at the same time, a loosening of interpretative conceptual bonds and of the tightness of knowledge".
FOX KELLER Evelyn, Feminism and science, pp. 123-135
She examines the impact of recent feminist criticism of science on the relationship between science and feminism. Different aspects of criticism of androcentrism are illustrated: from the accusation of unequal opportunities at work, to prejudice in the choice and definition of problems, to the way in which experiments are carried out and interpreted. Feminist criticism now extends to the roots of scientific thought.
The author analyses science as a social process
through the psychoanalytical perspective, concluding that a typical attitude
of male cultural outlook can be traced within modern science, for instance when
it includes domination among the aims of scientific knowledge. There are, she
counters, other possible attitudes towards nature.