Carla Lonzi’s work as a feminist writer and philosopher as well as an experimental art critic has been recently rediscovered and (re)translated into both German and English. In 2019 two exhibitions revolved around Lonzi were organized in Milan (The Unexpected Subject: 1978 Art and Feminism in Italy) and in Rome (Doing Deculturalization). Starting from Lonzi’s definition of woman as the ‘unexpected subject’, this course will provide an overview of the Italian feminism of difference (among the others Adriana Cavarero, Silvia Federici, Luisa Muraro, Rivolta Femminile collective) in order to explore its limits and its relevance for the contemporary debate on essentialist and non-essentialist feminism. According to Lonzi the ‘unexpected subject’ will emerge only when ‘emptying’ herself, exposing to the risk of ‘losing her reason’. But what exactly is the phallogocentric reason Lonzi and other feminist thinkers like Hélène Cixous aimed to criticise and replace? In order to answer this question, we will look at the main site for creating a new language: writing as a practice that allows to think through the body. The latter being the fundamental protagonist of feminists’ struggles concerning reproductive work and the very subject of the famous slogan ‘the personal is political’, will hence have a crucial role in the course – marking the difference between Leib and Körper. Why and how has the body gained so much attention in contemporary academia?
Semester: SoSe 2022