DWF
donnawomanfemme
Roma, Editrice coop. UTOPIA, 1986-

Politics. On the Edge of Time, 1997, n. 36

EDITORIAL, Politics. On the Edge of Time, pp. 2-3

This issue focuses again on the themes of the previous one - Politics. A Difficult Love story - taking up the contributions published there, as well as the following discussion in the editorial board. Each member of the editorial board engages directly and singularly with such themes, each according to their different priorities; but all in various ways witnessing to a "a feeling of vertigo, such as it is experienced when one realises one is on the edge - here, on the edge of time".

BIONDI Annalisa, A turning point, pp. 4-8

The author analyses some features of the present historical moment, and their relevance to the formation of identity. The coming to an end of the industrial period, the waning importance of politics and the taking over of the market and finance, the weakening of the male symbolic order, these are the signs of a momentous passage to a new era. This passage upsets roles and identities, and also the creation of a sense of self. If virtuality is taking the place of reality, and performance that of a true relational engagement, can the category of sexual difference still be fruitful in order to create the symbolical order of the future?

MASI Paola, Women without antecedents, pp. 9-16

The figure "women without antecedents" is offered as a reading of the potentialities and limitations of the relationships between/among contemporary women. The paper touches upon several points: women's place in a "female genealogy", the search for a language to say totally new relations, the difficulty to think about the present. The same figure is used to interpret the "silence" of many women concerning the narration of their lives.

FORTINI Laura, If on a winter evening in Salzburg, pp. 17-22

The author answers the questions posed in the editorial of the previous issue of DWF narrating the story of her meeting with feminism in her university years: how this meeting resulted in a radical change of her way of relating to the preceding generations of women and to the world around her. Faced with a feeling of estrangement regarding the real possibilities of politics, the relationships with other women gave her a sense of self which allowed her to fulfil her wish to be "whole" in public places (her work places, for example: secondary schools and the university), having as her point of reference a symbolical community of women, which is now lost.

CACIOLI Patrizia, Dribbling, pp. 23-25

The author uses the idea of being "irreducible" to point to a capacity to swerve and dribble the usual political mediations. Otherwise, as it is the case in this phase of Italian politics, "a good government based on the neutrality of the citizen-client-user entails the risk that the symbolical relations between men and women will not be questioned at all".

CHIURLOTTO Vania, Each time as if it were the first time, pp. 26-28

According to the author, the political practise of signifying relations between/among women is not fully productive without public political sites where these relations are read and interpreted with their "problems and results, failures included, and especially failures". Occasions are needed to elaborate and put into words what "is every time born when women meet in order to give their lives a meaning not dictated by the desire of others".

BONO Paola, A necessary step, pp. 29-32

Have passions and dreams disappeared from the political scene? Passions as personal involvement, as putting oneself at stake in and for a transformation of the world; dreams not as consolatory fantasies but as the capacity to see beyond and to think differently, without accepting "reality". For years passionately concerned with politics, the author admits now to a feeling of confusion and discouragement, to a need to recover (redefine) the meaning of politics in order to be once more able to believe that change is possible and act accordingly, without experiencing a gap between her daily life and the great, often tragic, events of our present times.

GIARDINI Federica, The obvious and the obtuse, pp. 33-36

Where is politics in what you're doing? If an elder woman asks and if the answer fails to come, there could be some good reason and some good idea to re-start with. Thinking how history in feminist politics crosses single lives, for instance.

GARRETAS RIVERA Maria-Milagros, Feminine writing: a recurring phantasm, pp. 37-49

The author wonders how and why there should be a question as to whether feminine writing exists; that it does is evident, she argues on the basis of her own experience in relations to works of art by men and by women. "These two arts belong to different systems of signification, not to a supposedly universal neuter; systems where sexual difference, the (casual but necessary) sexual differentiation of the human body, is a relevant signifier; these arts are neither necessarily symmetrical nor asymmetrical, they are just different". But since such a question also requires a philosophical discussion, and not simply the evidence of experience, she looks at it historically, arguing that "modern and contemporary Western culture have created the problem of feminine writing, a problem still open after five centuries".

ROSSILLI M.Grazia, Made in Germany, pp. 50-51
SCHÄFER Eva, "We/Us": what does it mean? The act of deconstruction on feminism: meanings produced by postmodernism and deconstruction in the feminist context of East Germany, pp. 51-67
SAUER Birgit - LANG Sabine, Postmodern feminism and political action, pp. 67-86

The two papers translated and introduced here by Maria Grazia Rossilli - one by a feminist from former DDR (Eva Schäfer), the other by two feminist political scientists from West Germany (Birgit Sauer and Sabine Lang) - were presented at the lOth Berkshire Women's History Conference in 1996: one argues in favour and the other against feminist post-modern theories. They are especially interesting insofar as they contextualize the issues under discussion within a political assessment of German feminism. The defeats of East German feminists would seem to confirm Sauer and Lang's hypothesis that post-modern theories mirror the fragmentation of feminist political action.