UN‟INNOMINABILE PRESENZA: LE LESBICHE NEL FEMMINISMO ITALIANO TRA NOMINAZIONE, SILENZIO E CONFLITTO. ELEMENTI DI UN DIBATTITO E CONSIDERAZIONI ATTUALI

• Authors: MERCANDINO Valeria

Title variants

EN

AN UNMENTIONABLE PRESENCE: LESBIANS WITHIN ITALIAN FEMINISM BETWEEN NAMING, SILENCE AND CONFLICT

• Languages of publication: IT

Abstracts

EN

Italy nowadays continues to witness a missed encounter between feminists and lesbians. This is the result of the incompatibility between a society for all women and the lesbian specificity as an autonomous practice that is existential, political, and theoretical. Lesbians have been active in the feminist movement ever since its inception. However, their presence has oscillated between a silent integration and a fight for the affirmation of their own specificity within the ―in-between women. From the 1970s onward, Italian feminism aimed to craft a wide movement embracing the identity and freedom of every woman. Yet, the objection is that it did not make room for the specificity of some women, cutting off the question of sexuality, thus mutilating the ―personal is political‖ practice. In this paper, I trace the debate of the 1970s and 1980s on these issues through a reading of the Italian feminist journal DWF. More specifically, I consider the interventions of Ida Dominijanni, Simonetta Spinelli, and a discussion between Teresa De Lauretis and Luisa Muraro.

Keywords

EN

Italian feminism; lesbians; sexuality; identity; personal is political

• Publisher: Inter Litteras Research Centre, STEFAN CEL MARE University, Suceava, Romania; STEFAN CEL MARE Publishing House
• Journal: Concordia Discors vs Discordia Concors: Researches into Comparative Literature, Contrastive Linguistics, Cross-Cultural and Translation Strategies
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 5
• Pages: 161-195

Contributors

author

MERCANDINO Valeria

• University of Verona, Italy