DWF, 2003, n. 2-3. Great women

This issue is a collection of articles by and interviews to six extraordinary women, all of them over seventy, all of them active in women's politics in Italy from the very foundation of the Italian Republic after the Second World War. Retracing and analysing their personal experiences with a view to the present state of women's politics in Italy, they poses several questions to today's feminism on the meanings of memory, autonomy, political choice and genealogical relationships.

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MATERIA

VIVIANI Luciana - TEDESCO Giglia, A long march, pp. 6-22

A dialogue between two leaders of the Unione Donne Italiane (UDI) on the methods, instruments, organisational structure, actions and heritage of the UDI, the biggest political organisation of women born from the Resistance movement in Italy.

A long story, from the end of World War II to the Seventies and the conflictual yet fruitful meeting with feminism; the reconstruction of a period and of a political climate when women's political battles grew and changed, moving towards a fuller autonomy. A reconsideration of the strengths and limits of the UDI which may well be worth interrogating in order to understand the present situation of women's politics.

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MAFAI Simona, The woman and the communist, pp. 23-27

The author, who lives in Sicily, analyses the possible reasons of the enduring silence of the Italian left-wing political parties on the practices, achievements, choices of women's politics. Drawing upon her personal experience of the difficulty of being both a woman and a communist, she identifies the issues of the feminist political approach which were not and are still not understood by the traditional political parties of the Left.

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RUDAS Nereide, The freedom of a 'weak' agency, pp. 29-37

An analysis of the experiences of the Unione Donne Italiane in Sardinia, in a vivid reconstruction of political links, specific actions and possible proposals around the political meanings of autonomy.

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GIUDETTI SERRA Bianca, The choice, pp. 38-42

Retracing the reasons for her becoming involved in politics during the Resistance, the author interrogates the sense of her choice and the values which since that time have marked her whole life.

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CARETTONI Tullia (edited by MASI Paola), We young women of the First Republic, pp. 43-54

A Senator for 30 years, now the President of the UNESCO Italian National Commission, the author looks back at her political biography and especially at her parliamentary activity on behalf of women.

The fight for emancipation following World War II is seen as analogous to the fight for liberation of formerly colonised countries. The fact that today the Italian Left seems little interested in women's politics reflects a provincial political vision and an incapacity to look farther and think in wider terms.

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POLIEDRA

ANTONELLI Sara, With a woman's hands, eyes and body: journalism in the USA, pp. 55-72

The essay proposes a short history of American journalism focussed on the role played by women journalists and photographers. Starting from the seminal work of Elizabeth Goddard, the author emphasises how women have employed journalism to shape their life and establish their authorial authority.

In order to unveil the world, to bear witness and to speak for those who cannot speak, in fact, women such as Lydia Maria Child, Margaret Fuller, Nelly Bly, Frances Benjamin Johnston and Margaret Bourke-White managed to tell a story and to re-create themselves as exceptional women and workers.

Photographers Hansel Mieth and Susan Meiselas question, therefore, the assumed objectivity of documentary showing how telling/showing the truth implies an act of performative authority whose ultimate result is the blurring of the line that separate fact from fiction.

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CIMITILE Anna Maria, Climbing to the bottom. Hélène Cixous's feminine criticism, pp. 73-87

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by Hélène Cixous is an incursion into the depths of writing. Cixous reads Kafka, Cvetaeva, Genet, Lispector; her literary criticism is original in so far as she chooses the texts by looking for 'affinities' between her way of relating to writing and the one revealed in them.

The article looks to the way the 'truth' and 'mystery' Cixous sees in all writing are part of her literary criticism too, and to the fundamental relationship between sexual difference and writing there. It also follows her critical articulation of the poetical, the unconscious and the political in writing and of writing as a dangerous, yet unstoppable, dreamlike crossing of borders.

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