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DWF
donnawomanfemme
Roma, Editrice coop. UTOPIA, 1986-
Space, 2002, n. 3-4
EDITORIAL, Space, pp. 2-43
MATERIA
ZAMBONI Chiara
Comment: the space shared,
pp. 44-50
POLIEDRA
CENTI Simona
Masochism, visual pleasure, subversion, pp. 51-66
CENZON Paola
Virginia
Woolf: the goat who signified difference, pp. 67-88
SAPEGNO Maria Serena
- STORINI Monica - GIULIANI Fabrizia - AA.VV. del "Laboratorio"
Laboratorio
di Letture "Differences", pp. 89-126
SELECTA
MASI Paola - GIARDINI
Federica - BASILE Elena
Forum, pp. 127-151
Reviews,
pp. 112-122
Abstracts,
pp. 123-125
Authors,
pp. 126
Discussion (Vita Cosentino, Donatella Alesi, Maria Luisa Boccia, Rosetta Stella, Laura Gallucci, Paola Bono, Federica Giardini, Laura Fortini, Patrizia Cacioli, Paola Masi) and a comment (Chiara Zamboni).
Space - because feminism has left its mark; women have changed, the world has changed. The question is: how? how do we inhabit - today, after these changes - the "public" spaces we share with other women and with men? how do we (do we?) make visible in those spaces the gains of feminism and its political practices?
On these issues the editorial board organised a discussion with some women whose presence within Italian feminism has been significant. The letter of invitation emphasised the urgency to read politically the ways of women's presence in public spaces, their ways of "gendering" them.
Neither accepting the given rules nor striving to substitute them with another full set of rules - rather working day after day to redefine and modify one's relationship to that place, keeping faith to one's story, reading the whole of reality in this perspective. The discussion, preceded and followed by written exchanges of opinions, have both (partially) answered the questions and posed new and different ones.
The terms of the
problem: personal/politic/public, language, symbolic order … have been
examined and debated. Much of the discussion has been devoted to the narration
of practises, comparing our different ways to try and gender space. No conclusion
has been reached, nor was intended.
CENTI Simona (introduced by ALBANO Lucilla), Masochism, visual pleasure, subversion, pp. 51-66
Lucilla Albano,
a scholar whose work on cinema and psychoanalysis is well known, supervised
Simona Centi's dissertation on which this article is based. Centi draws upon
Gaylyn Studlar's theory of a masochistic cinematic pleasure (vs. the established
interpretation of a voyeristic position associated to sadism) to underline its
subversive power as well as its potentialities as an interpretative tool. Studlar's
hypothesis is exemplified in a reading of Joseph Von Sternberg's production
as a masochist macrotext, and within it of its most significant female icon:
Marlene Dietrich.
CENZON Paola (introduced by ZAMBONI Chiara), Virginia Woolf: the goat who
signified difference, pp. 67-88
Introduced by well-known feminist philosopher Chiara Zamboni, who supervised her dissertation, Paola Cenzon explores Woolf's life and death, listening to her voice in the light of today's questions.
Woolf's nickname,
'Billy goat', becomes an interpretative key: 'the goat is bizarre, awkward,
playful, different, atypical, intelligent, curious, the goat is pain and laughter'.
In Cenzon's reading of Woolf, the image of the goat becomes the image of that
female difference which was for Woolf a source of meaning and which she signified
for other women as well.
SAPEGNO Maria Serena - STORINI Monica - GIULIANI Fabrizia - AA.VV. del "Laboratorio",
Laboratorio di Letture "Differences", pp. 89-126
The experience of the "Laboratorio di letture: sguardi sulle differenze", at its third year, is here narrated by a large number of the regular participants. It is an activity open to all interested and held at "La Sapienza" in the Facoltà di Scienze Umanistiche.
It is based on
the exchange of views on some major texts in international feminist thought:
at each meeting three women of different generations are asked to report their
opinion on one work and the debate follows. From the different voices in this
paper it is possible to gather an impression of the variety of approach and
the diverse conceptualization of this stimulating experience.
MASI Paola - GIARDINI
Federica - BASILE Elena, Forum, pp. 127-151
La differenza politica. Donne e cittadinanza (Political Difference: Women and Citizenship), Maria Luisa Boccia's recent book (Il Saggiatore, Milano, 2002) is the starting point of a reflection on the themes it presents. Masi and Giardini highlight the strong points of the book as well as the questions it leaves open.
Basile reflects
on the limits of the discourse on the mother, especially dominant in Italian
feminism in the 90s, and proposes to rethink an aspect of the maternal that
does no longer pertain exclusively to sexual difference, but encompasses the
question of the species.