Feminist theory as practice: Italian feminism and the work of Teresa de Lauretis and Dacia Maraini

Abstract

There is much less disagreement within Italian, as contrasted with Anglo-American, feminism as to the relative responsibility of the political versus the cultural roots for women's subordination. Most Italian feminists tend to consider political elements as intimately connected with the cultural. This consensus is due both to the origins of the modern women's movement in Italy — in struggles in labor unions and political parties — and to Italian feminists' greater awareness of the internalization of conflicts within women's psyche. As a consequence, Italian feminists do not see individual efforts as separable from collective ones. I situate the writings of contemporary Italian feminists Teresa de Lauretis and Dacia Maraini within this context. De Lauretis claims that poststructuralist (mostly male) feminist theories permit a representation only of hypothetical women, while a feminist theory must “constantly come back to a collective reflection on practice, on experience, on the personal as political and the politics of subjectivity.” Maraini's popular writing illustrates this consciousness that “the micropolitical practices of daily life and resistance afford both agency and sources of power.” Feminist theories, according to both of these writers and to today's Italian feminist consensus, must be based on women in their material and historical specificity.