Diversity, difference and subjectivity
Sommary
di Elisabetta Donini
In recent years in the Mediterranean area there also have been several attempts to build up relations among women which have proved how much enpowerment each one can get by sharing plans and experiences. Through my direct involvement, I here refer mainly to the long and intense interactions between Italian, Palestinian and Israeli women beginning in Jerusalem(1) in August 1988 and a wide variety of initiatives,common programmes and theoretical exchanges were developed(2).In the beginning our intention was that of coming into contact with other women's problems, in realities outside our own but which we felt we were sharing; as a matter of fact we tried to create a bridge between women that would be able to pass through the conflict that divided -and to a great extent still divides - the Palestinian and the Israeli society. In our original standpoint, we reckoned to be able to appeal to the difference (between women and men) in order to try a positive experience - instead of mutual hostility and incompatibility - of differences (among women). Here I don't intend to discuss if, how, or to what extent that project has been realised; I would rather like to reason about a change of horizon that is well-represented by variations that were recently brought into the name in which we recognised ourselves from the start as the Italian network, "Visitare luoghi difficili" (Visiting difficult places N.Tr.), where stress was put upon the tension towards other worlds. Last June, on the contrary, a conference of women of the Association for Peace was set at the sign of "Abitare luoghi difficili" (Living in difficult places N.Tr.), in order to point out that we have "at home" a great number of problems of violence to deal with, from the Mafia to ethnic intolerance and to nationalistic resentments. It's exactly in this different dimension - brought back within the situation in which each woman lives - that I feel it is suitable to thoroughly reconsider the twofold concept difference/differences, in order to look into the actuality and effectiveness of a political perspective still wanting to concentrate itself on enpowering ourselves as women, in the face of a context that instead seems to be less and less willing to foster feminist subjectivity. On the other hand, by considering some of the greatest gender disparity problems which we have to contend with, here - in a country marked not only at the electoral level by the success of the Right - I believe they have a wide correspondence with those meanwhile displayed in many other realities(3). Though within the peculiar specificity of each situation, our autonomous spaces are anywhere at risk; as for Palestine, in fact, the process set out by the "peace agreement" of September 1993 has made the question of women's rights very pressing and of their possibility/capability to engrave in the structures and laws of the rising state a suitable basis for the social and political innovation that the women's movement has been developing during the years through widespread experience and of re-elaboration of prospects. Reckoning with the difficulties of our own context thus does not mean renouncing cross-cultural relationships or policies of diversity set out in the past; redefining our own positioning and creating new tools for a solid grip of our own reality is rather the necessary premise in order that exchanges and eventual convergences around common projects be efficacious(4). On the other hand, the controversies that exploded around the Conference of Cairo on population and development have outlined how the issues of women's autonomy is crucial everywhere: the alliance between integralisms - both Catholic and Islamic - was the result of the will to prevent not just indiscriminate abortion, as it pretended to do, but that women should be protagonists in determining their choices in life. Nevertheless, one of the problems lies right here: today, "the women" is in fact a much less meaningful phrase than some years ago, when the movement was much more capable of rooting itself in widespread consciousness and aspirations and of being recognised as an expression of a widely shared, even though certainly not universal, tendency towards transformation. Today, on the contrary, in Italy there have been, for example, the sensational "anti-feminist" cries of women who are asserting themselves as strong personages - on the political, social and cultural levels - but that are refusing any gender definition; especially but not only, on the Right, they claim to exercise their citizenship, their presence within institutions and professional activities, and that gender is irrelevant, because what only counts is the individual - female or male. To conteract these trends, I don't believe it is enough to insist on how much they comply with male homologation and how much the reference model they adopt isn't neutral, but is built according to criteria and hierarchies in accordance with those that for centuries have been typical of men's characters and not women's. As to the continuous dilemma rising between equality and difference(5), the experiences and thoughts of these years have led me rather to think that it is not a matter of polarising either of these terms, but rather to reappraise the dichotomous logic embedded within them. If we are not able to change the very basis of the gender division, I'm afraid that these two horns of the antithesis will continue to prod us: the equality standpoint is full of risks that the few successful women integrated in a world dominated by males, while the majority remains encapsulated in a secondary and devaluated feminine dimension, would in turn create the danger of crystallising the splitting in two, the two opposite cores of the gender identity into which history has moulded women and men. Again, the very recent case of the Conference of Cairo is paradigmatical: in the North as well as in the South of the world there are women who profoundly adhere to the invectives of the Pope or of prominent members of Islamic fundamentalism, because in maternal power they find the most authentic basis of their own sense of themselves and of female presence in society. The feminist issue that is to valorise the "relational competence" and the caretaking capability of the "labour of love" certainly is very far from the perspective of motherhood as vocation and destiny(6): nevertheless, from the difference standpoint - and not with standing years of debates between "essentialists" and "constructivists"(7)- very alarming opinions are unceasingly spreading within debates of gender identity, about the generative capability of women's body, maternal experience and traditional stereotypes of femininity. At the risk of simplifying a lot, a way of approaching the question may be found if we focus on the gap between the notion (for centuries kept alive with patriarchal cultures) of motherhood as vocation and destiny and the feminist one that rather deals with choices of self-determination. Even though "choice" is a word to be used very carefully, having clear conscience of how much each subject always moves within constraints, I believe that this is a change in perspective which we should turn back to elaborate with renewed attention, in order to avoid both the distorting pretension that "women" acknowledge themselves totally in the experiences worked out by various feminisms and the risk that the fostering of gender difference comes down to the suggestion of maternal specificity. On the contrary, if we outline the intentionality according to which each woman "chooses" to set herself, hence we can find the sense and the strength of those who are active in women's movements and of those who declare themselves feminists, in the never- ending variety of each concrete situation. Enhancing the difference is meaningful not because it has any objective foundation, but because it contains the nucleus of self-achievement: it is a relevant standpoint in the world because it expresses the subjectivity of those who act according to it. Through a widespread analysis of the feminist debate about "right and rights",Tamar Pitch(8) has recently pointed out how such a question is complex both on the conceptual level and on that of political experiences. In particular by concentrating on the English and on the Italian cases, Pitch's essay efficaciously sets the question of who is the subject of the discourse: "all women" meant as (an) alleged "social group" discriminated by ruling laws; particular categories of women; singular political subject or yet a cultural meaning, a symbolical principle (feminity or, on the contrary, sexual difference(9)) and she analyzes from the same point of view both the criticism regarding the "sexual" or "male" or "patriarchal" feature of established approaches to the right question, and the different perspectives that one can foresee. Some of these aim at breaking the mystification of neutrality by pursuing a "sexual right" able to take into account that genders are two, while others talk about female liberty that stands "above the law" for it is not reducible to a law reform. In her conclusions Pitch tries to give an idea which in my opinion is very suggestive, asserting that "it is not so much a citizenship deficit that women suffer from as a sovereignty deficit" that thus needs to be fought with "policies producing sovereignty" policies of here and now, by us and for us, in which one can't separate the means from the aims, who acts from who benefits from the action"(10). These passages perhaps make clearer what I meant above by mentioning the possibility of reconsidering the perspective of difference in the intentional and situational sense, that is resetting it as a projectual choice with respect to a context. Setting ourselves as the subject of a feminist discourse expresses a decision and it is a way - which varies for every woman - to build our own identity; the issue of autonomy and enpowerment "as women" thus interlaces with a reinvention of also being individuals and raises questions pertaining as much to the order of freedom as to that of social justice and that is why they require going beyond the distinction equality/difference. In terms of these knotty issues the difficulties of the Italian situation at the moment seem immense; in a period in which liberty is flaunted by the Right in order to legitimate the most unscrupulous using of "the public" to reinforce "the private". But the proprietor view of individuals thus triumphing is just one of the inheritances mostly imbued with male dominance that history has ever delivered; an approach to difference according to the way of relationship - and not to an essentialist ossification of duality - can give some means to dismantle such an atomistic view of individuals and allow the flowing of interdependencies - which each woman or man is fed of - emerge instead. From this point of view, I believe it judicious to appeal to feminist positioning, eventually exploring its potentialities and resources with a renewed radical outburst. In my opinion, the issue of partiality remains one of the most fruitful reference points to orient political experiences in which everyone thoroughly acknowledges the limited, subjective and contextual significance of her own point of view, without any pretension to generalising in the name "of the women". Hence a clearer assumption of responsibility can come about with respect to our own choices and therefore a more tenacious work on projects that are set up; and with this I want to go back to the argument I started from: even the seeking for transversal and cross- cultural relations among women of different countries needs to be kept alive by syntony and synergy that are not guaranteed by any shared female condition, but by routes covered together, starting from the decision to know and recognise each other within the differences. (1) Cfr. Giovanna Calciati et al. (a cura di), Donne a Gerusalemme. Incontri tra italiane, palestinesi e israeliane, Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino 1989. (2) Il momento piu' intenso si e' dato nel seminario internazionale "Molte donne, un pianeta" organizzato a Loiano nel settembre T92 dal Centro di Documentazione di Bologna, che ne ha anche raccolto i materiali. Riflessioni sul convegno e alcune delle relazioni si possono trovare in Suha Hindiyeh, "Notes on a Feminist Conference", Sparks 8&9 (April/June 1993), p. 2-4 e 20-23 e nel dossier a cura di Tikva Honig-Parnass, "Feminism and the Peace Struggle in Israel", News from Whitin 8 (October - November 1992), p. 2-5. (3) Un interessante dibattito sui problemi che oggi si pongono rispetto a pratiche politiche, presenza di donne nelle istituzioni, rappresentanza di genere si puo' trovare in Alessandra Bocchetti et al., "La Repubblica delle donne", Critica Marxista 2-3 (1994), p. 29-61. (4) Cfr. Elisabetta Donini, "Io, noi, il mondo. Relazioni tra donne e politiche delle diversita'", Lapis 22 (1994), p. 45-48. (5) Cfr. Gisela Bock, Susan James (eds.), Beyond Equality and Difference. Citizenship, feminist politics and female subjectvity, Routledge, London and New York 1992. In una prospettiva storica piu' ampia si veda anche Anna Rossi-Doria (a cura di), La liberta' delle donne. Voci dalla tradizione politica suffragista, Rosenberg & Sellier, Torino 1990. (6) Cfr. Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking. Towards a Politics of Peace, The Women's Press, London 1989; trad. it. Il pensiero materno, red Edizioni, Como 1993. (7) Si veda in particolare Linda Alcoff, "Cultural feminism versus post-structuralism: the identity crisis in feminist theory", Signs 13; trad. it. "Femminismo culturale e post-strutturalismo", Memoria 25 (1989), p. 7-35. (8) Tamar Pitch, "Diritto e diritti. un percorso nel dibattito femminista", Democrazia e diritto 33 (n. 2, aprile-giugno 1993), p. 3-47. (9) Ivi, p. 3-4. (10) Ivi, p. 43-44.