I like it, I like it not, 1986, n. 1

For a new Dwf project, p. 5

The project launching the quarterly's new series is outlined. Its political aim is to connect the identities of various existing groups, in the first place by clearing the hypotheses, models and experiences of femininity underlying any research and behaviour. The quarterly refuses a moderate use of hypotheses and strives to be a meeting point of singularities who don't deny their belonging to their sex, and to gender and political history, but question what is now codified worldwide as 'feminism'.

EDITORIAL, I like it, I like it not, pp. 7-10

The history of female gender developed in the space between assent and reservations when confronting the models and control imposed by patriarchy. Women's political movements in their maturity are conscious of this dynamics, and this gives rise to a new space to be investigated. Therefore the necessity to introduce a category of knowledge emphasizing the non separation between object and subject of knowing. Such category is here named "I like it, I like it not". It supposes a subjectivity which questions itself about the historical and personal existence and meaning of its own interests; it authorizes self legitimation and enhancement of differences between women; it may become the measure of one's own ethical coherence; its political feedback is the difference between the individualities at stake, and the wager of their communicating.

MASI Paola, Self-snaps, pp. 11-21

Tracing a history of self-representation in feminist thought and cultural production the author highlights the passage from the critique of given male produced representation to the production of an autonomous knowledge. She then analyses the prevailing and innovative "figures" taken on her feminist self-representation i.e. fluids and emigration. The modalities, the forms, the categories of these two "figures" are examined through a critical reading of several feminist writings, also in order to suggest the possibility of investigating and creating new forms of self-representation.

SPINELLI Simonetta, Je ne regrette rien, pp. 22-28

A history of italian feminist movement outlined by a participant through the analysis of some meaningful words (movimento, organizzazione, spontaneismo, affidamento). The author describes the passages, the significant stages, the conditions which have rendered these words authoritative, thus re-tracing a history of political relationships between/among women in the feminist movement. She then focuses on the word affidamento chronologically the last of these authoritative words, using as a criterion of analysis "I like it, I like it not": Affidamento - meaning a particular relationship between two women, one being "more" than the other, who therefore entrusts herself to her - was first put forward as a political practice in 1983 in the writing Più donne che uomini by a group of the Libreria delle Donne in Milan. The author polemically singles out some features of this practice: the separation between individual subject and collective subject; the lack of an historical perspective placing the proposal in the context of the feminist movement; the rigidity and hierarchy in the relationship between women which the proposal entails. On the contrary she appreciates the forcefulness and directness of the language, and the "rich" image of womanness offered. The interest aroused in Italy by the proposal is also underlined.

PIAZZA Marina, Passage rites, pp. 29-40

An inquiry on the materiality of female intellectual work which implies the presence of the writers as a whole subject; which is charged with symbolic meanings which therefore goes beyond the mere action of intellectual production. Quoting from a series of interviews with women engaged in various fields of research, the author underlines the importance of those stages which allow the passage from subject's wish for self-expression to the intellectual production proper, to the "object". These stages are rites, passage rites. Self-legitimation, feeling of loss, anxiety, purification, concentration: it all happens through clearly defined gestures, propitiatory rites, definite places. A clean table, an orderly house, the accurate choice of coloured paper, large sheets, small sheets, fountain pens; each woman signifies and selects different forms.

COOPERATIVA LENOVE, Inside a project, pp. 41-46

A group of women in 1980 founded a cooperative to carry out socio-economic research describe the reasons of their choice, the difficulties and the challenges which have marked the birth and the development of their project. The changes occurred since the initial stage and the present situation are analysed in the light of the relationships among the members of the group during five years of common work.

OMBRA Marisa, The end of a transgression, pp. 47-51

A woman recalls her experience as a partisan during the Resistance. She narrates some episodes and emphasises the relationship between those events, memory, and their permanence in today's reality.

MONTESSORI Elisa, Inchiostri, pp. 52-77

A short text by the artist interprets the sense of her "Inks", here represented by twelve plates, in an evocative mode.

MELCHIORI Paola, The connivent dream of perfection, pp. 79-90

A study of the forms and the contents of self-representation in the cinematographic production by women. According to the author, more than writing or theoretical thought, films can be placed in an intermediate area between dream and reality. Therefore, she means to use women's film production to highlight the unconscious or oniric images which underlie one's self-representation. Following this premise, the analysis develops along three lines: the images of the female body in traditional cinema and in women's cinema; the forms of "looking" of three directors (M. von Trotta, M. Duras, C. Ackermann); the perspective of the female spectator. In her conclusions the author suggests a philosophic-psychoanalytical interpretation of the conditions which allow women as subjects to live the "illusion" represented and/or created on the screen.

MELANDRI Lea, Theory has cold feet, pp. 91-98

A reflection on the relationship between real experience, emotions and theoretic thought in women's writing. The author retraces the reasons and the contents of her book L'infamia originaria, which in the 70's constituted a theoric mainstay of the Italian feminist movement, with the aim of showing how theory production for a woman is tied to the awareness of her own life experience, to the experience of her own body, in order both to bear it and to he reinforced by it. Bearing in mind the difficulty women meet in trying to produce theoretic thought, she describes this process as a kind of re-birth, or a form of self-caring which opposes the impossible challenges of one's existence.

CHIURLOTTO Vania, Series "Impossible loves", pp. 99-100

This short text evokes a special life relationship with a subject who is persistingly and irrevocably "other".

TABET Paola, From gift to tariff, pp. 101-130

A study of the relationships between man and woman involving a sexual-economic exchange, the female party providing a variably defined service comprising sexual usage or access, the male party contributing a payment of various kind linked to the possible sexual usage of the woman. These relationships are seen as a continuum, at the one end of which are found the relation, rigidly defined in terms both of prices and of services, typical of some forms of prostitution. Through a trans-cultural analysis of the continuum of variations, and of the breaks and separations between forms of sexual-economic relationships, a redefinition of the conceptual field, including prostitution, is proposed. The author puts forward an analysis of the alienation of female sexuality in terms of gift or payment, where sexuality is not exchanged for sexuality, but (female) sexuality is exchanged for something other than itself.