DWF. Donna Woman Femme
Rivista internazionale di studi antropologici storici e sociali sulla donna
Roma, Bulzoni

1975 Year I, n. 1

Presentation, pp. 7-9

The scientific and political programme of the journal is presented, its aim being a critical re-vision of woman's image as it has been produced in all fields by a male-dominated culture. The methodological and theoretical tools produced by such a male-oriented culture, and graciously granted to women in their emancipatory process, will be used to dismantle that image.

MAGLI Ida, From "natural" history to "cultural" history - Woman in Anthropological Research, pp. 11-25

The anthropological concept of "culture" has meant a revolution in the study of man. It has moved the emphasis from man's "nature" to his collective and cumulative "products" Before the birth of cultural anthropology man's history was a "natural" history. From antiquity, throughout the Middle Ages, up to the Renaissance and beyond, it was cosmobiology, that vital link between sky and earth, between gods and men, which rendered the universe intelligible. The history of woman, too, was a "natural" history - her own rhythms binding her tightly to the cosmic cycles. With the Age of Enlightenment, the cosmobiological vision gave way to an organic, scientific view of the universe, closely linking the physical to the moral and psychological, a science thus still more radically tying the history of woman to her "nature". Only with the discovery of the concept of "culture", embracing a global vision of reality, does it become possible to identify the true history of woman.

MORSELLI DAVOLI Graziella, The Woman as a knowing subject, pp. 27-35

A science in which the woman is the knowing subject is a distinct part of the epistemology. Its individuation within the general knowledge may be explained either in social terms (but in then gives origin to sciences relevant only in specific historical and social framework), only the hypothesis of the multiple logics. It is necessary to carry out a statistical and descriptive survey and a formal analysis of the feminine scientific thought in its specificity, in order to highlight its structural constants and insure their translability into theory. The formulation of a theory of science with the woman as epistemic subject is both a political act (because from the consciousness of their "logical universe" women can derive the power necessary to affect the transformation of the society) and a preparation to a "radical and fundamental" philosophical synthesis: first of all because the methodology itself will have to be an original one; and secondly because, by exploring the thought back up to the origins of every diversity, it may be able to reset the relationship subject-object in knowledge and to contribute, through the epistemic consciousness of the "living" feminine subject, to the establishment of a future human science, beyond the "masculine" science itself.

BUTTAFUOCO Annarita, Time regained. Reflections on the profession of women historians, pp. 37-47

The author analyses the role of women historians. She believes that the discipline of history is going through a period of crisis. This crisis is due to the discovery of a new history which is mythical, repetitive and primitive; by a new economics and by the discovery of a long "duration". Women who wish to deal with history as a discipline must examine a total history which is no longer partial as it has been up to the present. They must refute the existing cultural immobilism and accept the discontinuous: in one word, they must expose themselves to history. Most significantly, the woman historian must give back to history a history of women - i.e., a history where women are active participants and subjects as opposed to passive objects, which are merely acted upon. In this manner history will no longer be conceived as it has been up to today; i.e. "his-story" or history of man, it will become history of all humankind.

CONTI ODORISIO Ginevra, Woman's Subjection, pp. 49-63

Woman's subjection was carefully examined in the eighteenth century by S.H.N. Linguet, an interesting and original essayist. He sought to analyse the phenomenon, and to explain how this subjection had come to be reinforced down the ages. His polemical attack on Montesquieu reveals how differently the two writers evaluate the public and private roles of women in an all-pervasive patriarchal society. These differences are important, given that Montiesquieu's thought has profoundly influenced legislation in all western countries. Because they took different political positions, they envisaged different solutions for the emancipation of women. In Montesquieu's liberalism, this would be achieved through the gradual assimilation of women to masculine patterns. In Linguet's authoritarian democracy, on the other hand, patriarchal society and feminine freedom are seen as utterly incompatible and the need for a change in society recognised.

FERRO Filippo Maria, Woman - Sanity and insanity - Reflections on the History of Psychiatric Ideology, pp. 65-76

It is from cultural history that the history of woman's oppression may be reconstructed. Some aspects of that oppression in the development of psychiatric ideology are here examined. The examples span western thought, from classical antiquity to the modern era. They have been chosen at random, but always with the aim of stimulating a critical re-thinking of psychiatry's attitude to woman. The possibility of a different approach to women in psychiatric ideology is gaining ground inside the "New psychiatry" movement, partly through the revision of psycho-analytic theories, and partly through the political confrontation proposed by the so-called "antipsychiatry" movement.

MORREALE Maria Teresa, Malina, or the "female condition", pp. 77-89

Malina, a novel by the Austrian authoress Ingeborg Bachmann, who died in Rome in October 1973, expresses the extreme malaise of a woman unable to achieve a satisfying relationship both with the reality surrounding her and with the two men with whom, in different ways, she shares her life. M.T. Morreale's study aims to underline the close connection between the female protagonist of Ingeborg Bachmann's novel and the general condition of isolation in which a woman, however emancipated and free she may be, finds herself forced to live today. Malina, an autobiographical novel, accurate and telling in form and expression, sets up a close link between its central character and the authoress. The latter, whose life was that of an intellectual, a writer and at once a woman, a life both intense and full of suffering, gives her novel an existential dimension involving all women aware of the "female condition" as a discriminating element, as well as those who are gradually becoming aware of it. And since the woman is not an entity detached from the species, the theme of I. Bachmann's novel concerns all humanity.

GASBARRO Nicola, Feminine Film Signs: Women as Metalanguage, pp. 91-109

In both film and women in western culture there exists a fundamental contradiction: both are respectively "values" and "signs" of these "values". Film is a "value" with respect to the contents which it transmits; it is a "sign" with regards to the "codes of communication" which it uses. More over, the same use of codes is a "value" anthropologically speaking. Women in a patriarchal society such as ours even while having own "values" are often "signs" of masculine values. In film this "semiotic exploitation" of women is brought to an extreme thanks to the metalinguistic artefact. Film metalanguage uses the "woman sign" to give it new meanings which superimpose the usual ones. Even when women seem to express their own values, they really are transmitting male contents. It is necessary for women to liberate themselves from metalanguage.

CAPOMAZZA Tilde (edited by), Columbian women: present and future, pp. 111-135

Colombian Women, as women from many other which forces them to devote their entire life to the home and family. In addition to this form of discrimination common to other cultures, Colombian women are highly discriminated against at the economic, legal and political levels. Consequently, they find it difficult to enter into productive processes within a framework characterical by an extremely unstable and insecure labour market devoid of guarantees for both men and women. But even when the privilege of a certain type of education enables her to aspire to an employment activity, two principal problems arise: 1) psychological conflicts typical of changes in norms and 2) objective difficulties stemming from a society still lacking in social services. The study was carried out by a group of researches of CIAS (Centro de Investigacion y Accion Social) of Bogotà. Tilde Capomazza translated the text and combined and integrated it with a series of historical, anthropological and primarily socio-political observations with the objective of rendering the notes more understandable to non-Colombian readers. In particular, the condition of women is analysed within a socio-political framework and within the political decisions of the power élite.

BRIA Pietro, Notes on Psychoanalysis of Maternity, pp. 137-145

In this work the author proposes a first psychoanalytical interpretation of certain behavioural characteristics of women during pregnancy and childbirth. The described behaviour seems to be caused by a form of unconscious aggressiveness manifested by the mother towards the child who is to be born. This aggressiveness is supposedly due to a psychological mechanism for which the pregnant woman identifies herself with an "archetypical maternal image" which drives her to live the dual role of daughter and mother. The latter conflicting situation is possibly revealed either in the woman's "dreams" which often revolve around her own birth, or in her fear of damaging her child during childbirth. These phenomena are determined by difficulty within the woman's Id to recognise the child as an entity which is distinct from the mother's body.

MAGLI Ida, An Anthropologist's Observations, pp. 145-150

In the subsequent anthropological notes a different interpretation of the same phenomena is proposed. The social and cultural meaning of pregnancy and motherhood must be inserted in the psychoanalytical and psychiatric explanations in active form; i.e. as it has been interpreted by different human groups. It needs to be pointed out that in every culture the physical defects of the child are attributed to the mother's faults and/or cravings, a fact which could explain women's fear of damaging the child during childbirth. It must also be brought to the reader's attention that pregnant women are inclined to experience a relationship with the transcendental world and with the "power" of the dead and of the "other world". This experience does not belong to her imagination since this is the way it is classified by every culture.

BUTTAFUOCO Annarita (edited by), On whether women should be allowed to the Study of Arts and Sciences; academical discourses by various living authors concerning the education of women (most of them pronounced by the authors themselves) to the Accademia de' Ricovrati in Padua; 16 June 1723, pp. 151-177

This text is offered as a source of further research, as well as of a critical re-reading.