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DWF
donnawomanfemme
Roma, Editrice coop. UTOPIA, 1986-
Modern Times, 1998, n. 39-40
EDITORIAL, Modern Times, pp. 2-6
BOCCIA Maria Luisa
Private Road, pp. 7-12
LASAGNI Cristina
Acting in Silence, pp. 13-18
ZAMBONI Chiara
Bad Girls Go Everywhere, pp. 19-23
BRUZZESE Marina - PUTINO Angela
Normativity and "Doing", pp. 24-28
CALEFATO Patrizia - ONORATI Maria Giovanna
Erotic body and utopia; figures of change in M. Atwood's
"The Handmaid's Tale", pp. 29-38
MILLER Nancy K.
Hadassah Arms, pp. 39-65
ALESI Donatella
"Long main roads, white with snow and dust": provincial
reality in the fiction of the Marchesa Colombi and Natalia Ginzburg, pp.
66-89
LOCATELLI Carla
(Auto)biography: a figure of reading in a feminist co(n)textual
politics, pp. 90-113
Sliding doors, pp. 117-130
EDITORIAL, Modern Times, pp. 2-6
Discussing in public meetings with women from different parts of Italy the problem and questions addressed in two previous issues of "Dwf", ("Politics. A Difficult Love Story", n. 34-35, 1997; "Politics. On the Edge of Time", n. 36, 1998), and listening to their experiences, as well as to those of many friends and colleagues in our different walks of life, we of the editorial board have become increasingly aware of a change we want to investigate and understand better.
There is now a greater capacity and possibility to "do" things with other women, to set up public activities and events - often, though not always, having to do with one's work - without necessarily or explicitly inscribing them in a feminist horizon of meaning. This widening of women's possibilities of "doing" asks us to reflect a new on the meaning of - personal and political - relationships between / among women, and on the difference between everyday experiences and a political practice.
BOCCIA Maria Luisa, Private Road, pp. 7-12
Reflecting on the questions inevitable for a woman who doesn't want to became "a prisoner of her own loyalty to her past", the author addresses the issues discussed in the editorial, concluding that "doing for and on our own" may be only a shortcut. If we don't share "the essential dimension of a continuous questioning of the relation between the self and the world", we risk privatising the very relationships between/among women, which would then lose their political meaning.
LASAGNI Cristina, Acting in Silence, pp. 13-18
Also thinking of her professional experience, the author questions the perhaps too great value attributed to words (often easily subject to obsolescence) and to the act of naming as a lever for symbolic change: "perhaps what each woman manages to do - to be - also produces change in the ways of being and thinking of those around us, and such changes are not irrelevant with regard to the continuing existence of a given symbolic order".
ZAMBONI Chiara, Bad Girls Go Everywhere, pp. 19-23
Reflecting on the nature and meaning of her relationships with the young women who are her students at the University (but not only on them), the author argues that these relationships "are not immediately political, they become political if we name them as such". She then suggests some hypotheses on the reasons why many women resist such a move.
BRUZZESE Marina - PUTINO Angela, Normativity and "Doing", pp.
24-28
According to the authors, the newly acquired possibility of "doing" together as women does not automatically produce a critique of the given state of affairs, nor of its recurring threats of normativity. Rather, it may be a deceitful last refuge against the anxiety experienced by every being faced with her/his weakness. What is needed is the capacity to comprehend each and every event not only in itself, linking together a diagnosis of our present times and the possibility of female freedom.
CALEFATO Patrizia - ONORATI Maria Giovanna, Erotic body and utopia; figures
of change in M. Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", pp. 29-38
In this section of the journal an established feminist scholar (Patrizia Calefato) introduces a younger scholar. M. Giovanna Onorati discussed Atwood's novel as a text which "through a visionary and poetic language becomes the site where a signifying body can appear, creating the conditions for a female and utopic sense constructing process".
MILLER Nancy K., Hadassah Arms, pp. 39-65
The author reflects on Jewish identity, as an intellectual, feminist, American woman. As she herself remarks: "It's not easy to write about being Jewish"; she does it by retracing with passionate irony some crucial moments of her life, in contrast with the triviality of anti-semitic discourse in its everyday aspects.
ALESI Donatella,"Long main roads, white with snow and dust": provincial
reality in the fiction of the Marchesa Colombi and Natalia Ginzburg, pp.
66-89
The author looks at the lives of the female protagonists of two novels respectively by the Marchesa Colombi and Natalia Ginzburg. Analysing their adventures, she highlights the relationship between female subjectivity and the spatial dimension of a provincial town. She also puts forward the hypothesis of a literary genealogical bond between these two writers.
LOCATELLI Carla, (Auto)biography: a figure of reading in a feminist co(n)textual
politics, pp. 90-113
The author looks at the complex issues raised by autobiographical writing once the traditional patriarchal view which sees it as a literary genre is overcome, turning one's attention to the rich feminist theoretical production in this field.
She argues that writing is activated by reading, the question thus becoming that of a "trace" left by the one in the other, and that of "a fantasmatic subjectivity (built in the reading itself)". Therefore, there can only be "hybrid" autobiographies; "there is no subject of writing. and no subject of reading, but only the (semiotic) passage of a gaze on subjective traces".
This section includes two political documents: The glass door. Women and men between the power and the impotence of politics, by M.L. Boccia, G. Buffo, I. Dominijanni, and Feminist changes, by the Roman group Onda, both publicly presented after the publication of "Dwf" n. 34-35 and n. 36. From very different points of view, they discuss the problems on which those issues focussed, analysing the Italian political situation.