SPEECH OF ROSALBA NESTORE

 

Brief preliminary note

 

This short essay about the way women acted from the ëfeminism of the second waveí up to contemporary days- the end and the beginning of the new millennium- focuses on two main reading keys.

The first one starts from the theory machine-, exactly form the defusing that feminist women have set inside the philosophy and the male knowledge. The second one starts from the political acting that tried to force a passage through the classical means of knowledge i.e. magazines, meetings, course of study, various publications, learning centres etc.

This short essay doesnít enable us to investigate themes and problems that deserve a solution, but we take on this obligation from now on.

 

 

FEMINISM AND TRANSMISSION OF FEMALE CULTURE: WHAT INSTRUMENTS?

 

Since the 70s women have culturally acted in these two main and different ways: the first one can be defined as a ë connectioní that is an action in opposition to the impulse of splitting. This connection attempted to keep together objective realities and levels of subjective experiences that were in origin thought as in contrast.
In support of this principle and of the absolute bond between the two levels, the way women acted broke the traditional conception that kept them strictly separated. Trying to join what has always been considered incompatible is one of the greatest merit and the most important cultural contribution of the female and feminist experience. Oppositions like personal and political, public and private, nature and culture, sense and sensibility, intellectual activity and physical existence which since a long time have been separated and in contrast, have finally received a strong urge to the connection thanks to the female knowledge. Since the mid 70s, the introduction of the term ëgenderí (that can be translated as gender but also as sexual difference or as an adjective indicating what deals with the gender and sexual belonging and in some cases it can even design species)_, has overturned and made a scientific breach in the several subjects with its disruptive power and its pluri-semantic meaning of social and cultural class.

Therefore, some of the leading classes of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, economy and theology, have shown in a short time (a bit more than twenty years) the wear and impoverishment processes they experienced together with theory instruments of the several subjects that proved to be inadequate and scarcely usable (Abel and Abel, 1983). The new knowledge, that is the result of the female criticism of the classical thought of knowledge has been carried out through the communicability of experiences until it has became a class, instrument and. Trying to bond the knowledge and the human behaviour, has shown the ëprimitive willí that characterised them and at the same time, it has >cut them down to size: we can admit and it can be transpired (even when it happens in natural psychic and physical facts) that all kinds of knowledge have had their own birth and history, therefore their own relative strength.

The birth of that ideology which set a sharp separation between the domestic and public world, produced as consequence two different effective ranges and subsequent cognitive dominions that are characterised not only by specific contents but also by sexual matters. Men can be set in public places with their recognisable, normative, classified, repeatable, transmittable, identical knowledge. On the other side, women can be set in private and sensible paces with their hidden, unrecognised, impalpable, mutable, indefinite, discontinuous knowledge.

This different and contrasting collocation refers to a more general reflection that deals with the lack of the classical dichotomies object/subject, objectivity/subjectivity, logical/empyrical. This problem reappears with its whole meaningfulness and urgency every time in the history other human beings endowed with knowledge calls for legitimacy of their questions and their answers through a reorganisation, if not a radical change in the knowledge already acquired.

Naturally it is too early to think that the demand of and the extraneousness to the knowledge are sorts of processes almost finished, but both of this processes are still present even with their changes due to a major physical presence of women and due to their scientific products.

 

 

 

2. FROM  CONNECTION TO DIVERSIFICATION.

 

A second very important action has stood by this activity of connection and later on has gained power and articulation. It moves in opposite sense, and it is characterised by a note of diversification.

In the shapeless drawing of a culture that is discoloured by a monotony re-proposing of an external self- portrait, profiles and sexed outlines have begun to be distinguished, and in the repetitive movement of monologues with sole protagonists, dynamism of many-voices theories have begun to sneak. The search of the differences in gender offered a new tone, new perspectives, instruments and subjects to talk about, radically changing institutions and traditional subjects.

ìThe starting point of the theories about the female as a difference, is the womenís consciousness to be the otherî, as Simone de Beauvoir wrote in his ìThe second sexî_. The other is the constant negative pole among the classical Pythagorean oppositions: day/night, full/empty, male/female, active/passive, etc. This consciousness expresses not only the comprehension of the injustice that women stood during their age-old exclusion from the theoretical reason, but at the same time, it also expresses the idea the philosophic thought can and must be read considering the place and the way it has been pronounced. In other words, far from being an universal speech, philosophy is marked by a sexual prejudice due to the fact that it tends to legitimate the male play of idealised self projection.

The expressibility of the ancient knowledge of women is recent and ëit is possible thanks to a breach, a cut occurred during the course of history.

It went towards the way of the female emancipation. It has been put apart from the thought and actions of a free sense of the female difference, that was affirmed for the first time in its wholeness and clarity by an Italian writer Carla Lonzií(L.Muraro, 1997).

The issue of the place of enunciation of women involved in the theoretical speech becomes now the place of new attempts to transforming the same signs hat women manipulate. Women are inside the culture and at the same time they work for changing it. As Irigaray defined ëbecoming womení , instituti onalised and never static (Luce, Irigaray, 1977).

Starting from the sexual diversification has shown multiple reflections about the differences between men and women and also between women and themselves in terms of race, class and culture, but as Virginia Woolf noted a long time ago, we wonít be able to define the difference until women will express themselves in every field of the human activity as fulfilled subjects. Here is the most exciting challenge for the new millennium: expanding and advertising womenís thought and reflection starting from the many subjects where they are already present, from physic to philosophy, from psychoanalysis to sociology, from economics to law, from bio-ethics to sexology etc.

 

3. TRANSMISSION AREAS.

 

All the conquest obtained in many fields (Social, sexual, political, intellectual, etc.), could last and represent a real change only if they are accompanied by a change in the representative system, above all a change of the symbolic space dealing with both women and men and the whole society.

Therefore, the transmission and the spreading of the culture of gender became very important. In particular, the transmission evokes meanings of communication but also meanings of succession of the culture between the generations. It is very important to make them think about the way the history of the world and its human nature has been told, transmitted and represented through people and bout the way the contribution of women to this history, to this representation, has been in great part hidden. And even if nowadays it appears in its whole obviousness that women could ever renounce the richness and the wideness of the male contribution to this history, we must be able to highlight that the problem is that the history made by man and women has been told, represented and transmitted through almost only male voices and works. Women were not present not only because >during the history they couldnít be able to express their creativity with works and transmit them (even if they had other means of transmission) but >also because a very big problem of reception still exists today. It means that the dominating cultural scenery doesnít perceive the innovative dimension of the female contribution.

The main problem we have to face nowadays consists in promoting womenís acts and words. We should allow that womenís thought and creativity are received, authorised, diffused and felt by women themselves; we should support the birth and the spread of magazines, nets, research and documentation centres, publications in order to preserve the produced knowledge from perishing.

We should encourage women who think and create; this means authorise them in the real sense of the term, we should help them be authors of themselves and of their works. Nowadays, womenís production has improved, and both in female and in male creation we can find a universal factor which could lead to a universal communication.

Therefore, we can definitely say that womenís work will be fully accepted when everybody will comprehend it.

 

4. THE NEW GENERATIONS AND THE SPREAD OF WOMENíS STUDIES.

 

At the beginning of feminist, we have thought due to a historical ingenuity and a great enthusiasm that a sole effort and a sole echo would have been enough to represent all the women in the world in a ideal unit. Later, we understood that this was an illusion and that while many womenís voices were already heard, others were still kept silent. People understood that in the years that were to follow, long and difficult impediments to our work were to came. We finally realised that in the last decades we have been singularities in interaction: ìthis is the place from where we can begin to look towards the positions of womenís policy. When the possibility to estimate them as ëmovimentalistí or in an immediate belonging to a gender came to an end, having considered that we canít take anymore for granted the presence of interlocutors who are recognised and recognisable referring them to the same ëcommunityí, the political though of women is mad e by singular voicesî.

We must reflect on the inevitable fact that nowadays the conditions of the transmission and of the reception are different from the past. We have to consider this in order to enable a new generation to make longer and to renew the knowledge that has already been produced.

The new generations of women seem to have acquired a strong sense of autonomy and independence that differs from the traditional sense of belonging to a group or to an ideology. It is rather visible in the affirmation of their own actions and of their own lives. Therefore, we can communicate with them only by starting from their positions.

The real meaning of the word ëtransmissioní rises from here: there must be something to pass to the next generation, but at the same time, the next generationís task is to assume, to transform and to do whatever they want of what we transmit them. Transmission can never be unilateral, it is a symbolic object, something that the new generation should acquire only after having transformed it in something necessary for its present and its future.

Women and their activity of knowledge made an enormous effort in order to find out channels and structures for the transmission and diffusion of the culture of gender. The main result of this effort is undoubtedly represented by the structure of Womenís Studies, which was born in the USA during the 60s in the social and political heat of that period. Women's Studies focus on the study of women as subject in the academic disciplines using several methods with a gender outlook and try to enhance the female reality in the past and in the present. Above all in the USA they are more represented like a political and social movement than a real academic programme and their aim is to create a new society through knowledge, research and teaching.

ìA kind of society that is free from every sort of oppression and exploitation: not only from sexual oppression, but also from racism, social- economical discrimination, prejudices of age and heterosexuality; it is supposed to be free from all ideologies and institutions that intentionally or not, have oppressed and exploited some people in order to benefit othersî (Boxer, 1982).

The first political class of Womenís Studies derived from the studentsí movement and was taught in 1965 in the New Orleans Free School. They were opened by Cathy Cade and Peggy Dublins with the subject about women's history. From that class onwards they spread quickly in the whole USA until when there were more than 2000 classes and 80 programmes in 1973. ìWomen's Studies spread from the departments of history, sociology, literature and then they struck into the professional institutes, into the secondary schools, in the schools without credits instituted in the community in the handcraft classes that were almost inaccessible to women until then like the class of carpentry and motorist, mechanic classesî (Simpson, 1983).

From the 80s to 90s, when the study of women and about women were being institutionalised in the USA, (All colleges already had classes in all states), the studies about gender were first added and later, as Teresa de Lauretis notes, were de facto substituted_. ìGender and sexual difference were the terms- synonyms- used just for a short period by women for discussing, analysing and facing the actual conception of the women defined in relation to a universal standard called ëmaní. As years passed and as >the discussion, the analysis and the research was made deeper, the terms were transformed into concepts, the concept of gender became a real theory object of the feminist thought and it was enriched with scientific values and with aspects that were initially ignored, as the incidence of the sexual and/or race differences on the creation of the identity or the belonging to a genderî_. Nowadays, the expression ëGender Studiesí, means again both the gender and the sexuality and it is used both in traditional compasses as the family and social relationships between men and women, and within more provocative compasses as the transvestism, the transgender, and the so called neo-sexuality.

From the 80s onwards, Women and Gender Studies, spread even in a lot of European countries, overcoming difficulties caused by the distrust and the resistance of the academic world. Today there are many of them in France, Germany and in Belgium. In Utrecht, in Holland, Rosi Braidotti, who is a philosopher of Italian origin, nomad and polyglot as she defined herself, makes the conclusion in a recent report about the instruments of diffusion usable from those of the first collection of 1970 entitled ìFemale Studiesî, that is the first of ten volumes edited by Shella Tobias, the glossary of feminist theories, the critical dictionary of feminism and psycho- analysis and the encyclopaedia of feminist though (that is just published by Blackwellís in Oxford).

 

 

5. LEARNING ABOUT IPPAZIA AND ARTEMISIA.

 

In Italy, the spread came trough reserved intellectual clubs that collected above all around magazines as ìwomen and Politicsî, ìWomenî, ìMemoryî, ìDWFî, and then, from 1987 ìNew DWFî and later still only ìDWFî, ìDogana Roadî to cite only the most famous_. The main merit of these magazines was that they included translations of important essays that introduced the discussion within European and international fields. Nevertheless, theydidnít include the translations of other famous work of diffusion already cited except the 5-volume work edited by Duby-Perrault, translated by Laterza with the title of ìHistory of women in the westî, in 1992. But in 1999an italian issue already cited in ìWomenís countryî by Liliana Moro and Sara Sesti, collects 50 biographies that describe the difficult relationship between women and science.

One of the first attempt to guide the discussion towards an organisation and construction of the reflections of women and their political and intellectual routes, seems to be the meeting of 1982 in Modena that ends with the proposal to make visible female thought and history still not very enhanced while, all the world around the ëofficialí culture remains silent.

Since then, other meetings, seminars and a lot of issues follow in a lot of >different scientific fields, which mark the discussion outside the institutions for the education and the transmission of culture above all schools and universities. The classes of Womenís History, that were the first embryos of Womenís and Gender Studies even in Italy, were born inside traditional disciplines thanks to single and stubborn teachers who have faced the sarcasm or the indifference of the academic world.

Only in the last years an attempt of changes has been placed, due to the introduction of the study of the ìTwentieth Centuryî in secondary schools thanks to Luigi Berlinguer and for the first time Italian Government faces the problem of a strong reform regarding the school books. In June 1999 the project ìPoliteî has been presented in Rome (same opportunities for the school books) thanks to the Minister Laura Balbo, to the minister Luigi Berlinguer, to Silvia Costa who is the president of the ëSame Opportunities National Commissioní and of the ëAssociation of Editors and Experimentation and Educational Centresí. In the presentation of the project it has been summed up what nowadays should mean a same opportunities culture even in the school books and it canít only mean the act of adding female presence in order to contrast or provide the male ones, but it would also mean to offer the most balanced representations of differences and to promote a culture of gender. In this sense, we are trying to introduce the European dictation that decrees the principle of the integration of the dimension of the same opportunities for men and women in all kind of politics and actions (mainstreaming).

Recognising the full womenís visibility in every discipline of study doesnít only mean providing men and female students with supplementary information and knowledge, but also providing them with philosophical, literate, political and artistic models in order to analyse and comment them and to compete and compare withthem. In so doing, we will enlarge the overview and the models and routes will be differentiated. Not only Socrates but also Ippazia, not only Ludovico Corracci, but also Artemisia Gentileschi, not only Giovanni Giolitti, but also Anna Maria Mozzoni, not only Alberto Moravia, but also Anna Marisa Ortese. It is not just a simple quantitative growth but a qualitative growth.

People should think again about the texts, workbooks, the methods of teaching and of the diffusion of culture, they should even think about language, trying to avoid stereotypes and offering at the same time materials from which starting critical reflections about the use of those stereotypes that are still very important in the different kinds of social communication.

The way womenís and manís relationship goes pass even by here.

A very good reconstruction of feminist theories is the book by Restaino-Cavarero, ëLe filosofie femministeí, Torino: Paravia Scriptorium, 1999.

Compare with Abel and Abel, ëThe Sgns Readerí, Chicago, 1983. On this proposal there is the already cited book by E.F. Keller, ëGenere e scienzaí, in ëAlice attraverso il microscopioí, Milano, La Salamandra, 1985, and also E. Donini, ëIl sesso della scienzaí in ëScienza/Esperienzaí, n.4, 1983 and V.Babini and Others, ëLa donna nelle scienze dellíuomoí, Milano, F.lli Angeli, 1986.

The last book by Adriana Cavarero, ëTu che mi guardi, tu che mi raccontií, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1997, shows how much this theory marked the way women think and act.

 

On the same subject compare with Rosi Braidotti, ëDonne e filosofia in Franciaí, in ëMemoriaí, n.15 (3, 1985).

Compare with Carla Lonzi, ëSputiamo su Hegelí, Milano: Rivolta Femminile, 1974.

 

The phrase refers to a note by Luisa Muraro entitled ëVia dogana: avere un taglio per essercií, in ësapere delle donne e trasmissioneí, Atti del Seminario di Studi, Lecce, Milella, 1997.

Compare with Luce, Irigaray, ëEtica della differenza sessualeí, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1985.

Compare with FranÁoise Collin, ëLo spazio plurare della trasmissioneí, in ësapere delle donne e trasmissioneí, Lecce, 1997. And by the same author ëLa memË et les diffÈrencesí, in ëLes Cahiers du Grifí, 28, 1983.

An updated and ehxaustive list of womenís magazines and female centres of bibliographical documentation is in Daniela Messito, ëWomenís Studiesí, thesis for the degree in Psychology of the Community, Universitý di Lecce, ottobre 1999.

On this proposal, S. Piccone Stella and C. Saraceno, ëGenere, la costruzione sociale del femminile e del maschileí, Bologna: il Mulino, 1997.

Compare with DWF, ëEditoriale, 199, 2-3, Aprile, Settembre, p.7.

 

Compare with F.Collin, ëLo spazio plurale della trasmissioneí, in ësapere delle donne e trasmissioneí, op. cit. p. 29 and following.

About these matters, compare with  the precious bibliography provided in the appendix to the book by M.E.vasaio, ëWomenís Studies negli USAí, in ëMemoriaí n. 15 (3, 1985). On themes about the Empowerment as valorisation of the female knowledge, compare with ëPechino e dintornií, monographic number of ìNuova DWFî, n. 1 (25), 1995; and also with B.R. Gelli and M.

Mancarella, ëEmprowerment al femminileí, in Psicologia di Comunitýí, n. 2(1), 1998.

The whole discussion about the evolution above all of the American University about Womenís Studies, is fully present in the recent book by Teresa de Lauretis, ëSoggetti eccentricií, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1999.

Compare with op. cit. pag.97.

Compare with  R. Bradotti, ëesami di riparazioneí, in ëNoi donneí,

Settembre,1998.

 

The magazine is out of print since the beginning of 2000 after a long story that would be interesting to reconstruct.

Compare with ëPercorsi del femminismo e storia delle donneí, in Atti del Convegno, ëMemoriaí, supplement to n. 22, 1982.

Compare with D. Barazzetti and C. Leccardi, ëfare e pensareí, Torino: Rosemberg e Sellier, 1995. On the Meeting in Rome, compare with Rosi Braidotti, ëLibri di testo per sapereí, in ëNoi Donneí, n. 71, 1999.