Feminist itenerary
Sommary
di Nadia Gambilongo
The project, the travel, the desire to sail among Mediterranean women regain the open sea towards feminist itineraries. It is difficult to say whether it is emotion that recommences to sail or the awareness that by crossing difference with differences, new horizons of relation between women, of ideas, perhaps of liberty will apear. North, South, East and West: cardinal points, points of view, but also starting and ending points of local and international policies for creating devasting and intrusive effects on community and individuality. Positions of command and spaces of emarginalisation. Stumbling blocks, barriers to communication and exchange: this is the frame Mediterranea(1) started from in '89 and tangled in fundamentalist depths. Mediterranea, driven by its great interest in the relation between research and women, has in recent years constructed a network upon which we can base our relations and our work today. to move from oneself, from one's reality bringing away one's own links, one's own roots to reach the other's reality, moving slowly, looking deeply, paying attention to others'feelings, others' place smell, to their sentiments and desires it's not so easy; you must not only say it or strongly desire it; you must really try. I still keep in my heart and in my eyes Jerusalem, Gaza and the Jordan Valley, I can still hear the words and see the eyes of the Palestinian and Israeli friends whom I left some days ago and it is because of my strong feeling for them and because we worked at a common project that it is easier to me to speak about relation between different women. We are in fact working at a telematic network involving women's centres in the Mediterranean and the review is a part of this project. This work has been initiated within the community programme MED-CAMPUS. This is the trace and the itinerary left by Mediterranea and this is what Mediterranean Review want to re-commence with more energy and greater force. Nomadic feminism, on the road towards other feminisms, is aware of the need to combine the "I" and he "We". The road towards liberty, that some of us have choosen, cannot be a solitary way, but must be based on the relations of individuals with a common objective rather than that of priviledged women within a particular geographical/social context. Race, gender and social class cannot be super-imposed, for they are the result of social relations, they are linked one to the other and the mixture and its diverse intersections can determine a sort of grid that as is affirmed by Nira Yural Davis(2). I would like to think that different colours of a tapestry can be combined on the basis of our different biographies and define us backgrounds and our choices cannot be taken out of consideration, but determine the weft and the woof of the fabric of our life. The reason why my want for exchange with, for instance, the women of the South is due to my being born in Calabria, of historic Albanian origins, having studied at Naples and always living in transit towards new destinations. The way for us is to conjugate the "I" and the "We" which are being continually re-defined and are sensitive to changes generated by the growth of knowledge of oneself. To depart from oneself to arrive at the others women, thus, means passing from a local-root dimension to one of global movement, of dislocation, means to construct our knowledge of the world, in which the personal and the exchange is not only political but the basis for the theory. This passion and desire to experiment in new ways, the continuous seek for change, that Rosi Braidotti calls subversive intelligence, is an ethical and political pulsion, linked to the history of femminism, of which we are a part and which comforts us during the journey(3). The attempt to trace new theoretical itineraries through multiple points of intersections, all of which with conceptual trajectories and intellectual tracks which form a discontinuous line of nomadic thought(4). A discontinuous track, composed of many points of query, in which the crucial point is to relate the act of reflection to the context which has generated it(5). Putting into communication the differences, passes through the women's networks, but for women who live in distant places this communication can also be supported by technology. And this is why, in this number and those that follow, the subject of "gender and technology" will often re-appear. There are two reasons for this. The first comes from the awareness that technology is rapidly changing our world. According to Donna Haraway (...)(6) "Communication technology depends on electronics. Modern states, corporations, military power, the apparatus of social state, control systems of work, political processes, the construction of our images, the medical make-up of our body, commercial pornography, the international division of work and religious evangelism, all these intimately depend on electronics (...). The same implications are valid for the multi-national material organisation of production and for the reproduction of culture and images". We can thus presume that it may be better to concentrate more on technology and particularily on that which relates to gender. Technology alone, in fact, cannot lead to anywhere. The second reason is that the technologies of communications, if used in this way, can shorten the distance between women who live in distant places but who want to work together, in fact it is possible to simulate situations of group work where they can dialogue in "real time" even if they are thousands of miles away. For those, like us, who do intend to connect the differences between women of the world, technologies can be, not only a useful support, but a way of expanding the networks of relations. Mediterranean Review will recurrently deal with subjects concerning the passion for networks between women different from and distant from each other. One of the main reasons for this, which perhaps has not been well-outlined, is that differences are considered as a value. Too often these differences are seen and/or experienced in negative terms and are considered as a problem to be overcome. Too often, for example, North/South is a synonym for positive/negative thus implying an ethnocentric vision of the world which, on the contrary, we want to fight. Another problem we want to deal with in these pages is difference between women who live elbow to elbow in the same territorial reality which may be variegated such as the Italian one. The practise of relations between women, as well as the theories, need different levels of confrontation and research, and this is why I think, the work 'at home' and 'outside home' must proceed parallelly in order to enrich themselves reciprocally on more fronts. A few words on our editorial aim. Mediterranean Review is published in Italian and English but the following numbers will also be translated into Arabic, basic language for communication in the Mediterranean area. The review editorially provides three sections: a monographic section dedicated to a chosen theme; a central part dedicated to service columns; and a third, to information and communications on initiatives, congresses etc Another thing to emphasize is that next year Mediterranean Review will be available on Internet; on this telematic network the review can be read on video, messages and information may be sent or even dialogue directly with the editorial staff. Until next time. (1) Mediterranea. L'osservatorio delle donne, Pellegrini. (2) Nira Yuval-Davis, Gender, race, ethinicity and class: the social formation of settler societies, SAGE, London. (3) Rosi Braidotti, Dissonanze, La Tartaruga, Piacenza 1994. (4) ivi pag. 26. (5) ivi pag. 26-27. (6) Donna Haraway, Simians, cyborg and women: the reinvention of nature, Routedge, New York 1991.