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EVENTS AND RESEARCH PROJECTS

  • CALL for PAPERS:Rarestance: a collective reflection around Italy today. A transnational publication, deadline July 31, 2010
  • April 2010: Orvieto, Italy
  • 25 February 2010: Naples, Italy

26 February, 2010

Sexuality media and power. Naples,25 Feb.2010

A round table on the topic of Sexuality Media and Power has taken place in Naples, Italy, on Thursday 25 February. The discussion proposed by Annamaria Crispino, Lorella Zanardo's documentary, Il Corpo delle Donne (http://www.ilcorpodelledonne.net/?page_id=89), Paola Di Cori and Renata Summo-O'Connell has generated a rich debate involving participants and speakers.

This has been the first opportunity for the Rarestance2009 Collective to actually propose to the wide public a critical debate around current contemporary Italian culture.
I include below the list of topics proposed for a future publication. Please contact Rarestance2009 via email at: rarestance at gmail.com if you wish to participate.

TOPICS

European critical democracy

The mythical core of European postmodern transnational fascism.

Cosmopolitan distance and interstices between cosmopolitan Europe and Italy

Migrations and Italian postcolonial melancholia

National Identity in Italy.

The cretinisation of women in contemporary Italian culture.

Aesthetic Rave. The female body and politics of oblivion and transformation in the berlusconi era.

Necrotic influences and cultural and epistemological models during the Berlusconi years.

Women in modern Italian society in the context of the Berlusconi decades.

Body of the South: women and land. Berlusconi, Southern clans and the politics of oblivion.

Deus ex Machina. Sociolinguistic considerations regarding language in the public sphere in Berlusconi times.

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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 27, 2010 at 1:28 PM

    I took part to the rountable on media, sexuality and power and I was thrilled by the presentations and discussion that followed. The debate was exciting and instructive and a good place to start to debate the issue of female representation in the Berlusconi era.
    My name is Enrica Picarelli and I am a phD candidate in sociology and television culture at the University of Naples, "L'Orientale", so I am particularly interested in the dynamics of production and "responsivity" that involve the discoursive and visual production of the female body.

    Here is a sequence from "Sabato, Domenica e Lunedì" (1990) directed by Lina Wertmüller starring Alessandra Mussolini,leader of the National Conservative Party known as Azione Sociale (Social Action).
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEfHVje--70
    [Further information on the movie can be found at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098244/]

    This is the last time she acted before being elected in 1992 in a neapolitan consituency but her career counts at least ten films.

    It could be interesting to focus on the sequence in light of Stephen Gundle's Bellissima (2007) that discusses the canonization of Italian female beauty. I believe the theatralization of A. Mussolini's body problematizes Berlusconi's 'colonization' of the bodies of other female members of the Italian parliament which apparently accept being treated as mute puppets.
    Mussolini's 'voice' -- not necesseraly in the movie but on the parliamentary scene -- is instead unruly, oscillating between aggression and accomodation, thus occupying a 'fringe' presence on the landscape of docile female bodies deployed by B.

    How is she contributing to shape contemporary politics and 'berlusconismo'? Can she be paired with Daniela Santanché (another conservative aggressive voice in the parliament)? And finally, how is her presence -- especially her assertive 'tone' and voice' -- affecting her female electorate? We should not forget that while Mussolini is in herself a very aggressive figure, her political project implies a silent female electorate and the silencing of the rights of migrant women.

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RARESTANCE 2009 TEMPORARY COLLECTIVE-English Version


The growing collective, formed last October 2009, aims at organizing a trans-institutional network of intellectuals, scholars, artists and other members of the interested public to develop a substantial, scientifically rigorous interdisciplinary debate as well as a body of research and knowledge surrounding contemporary Italian society, culture and politics.

The intention is to propose a constructive analysis of the Italian situation not just at a discussion level but also with the outcome of possible publication(s ) .

The topics we wish to investigate will grow and should change with everyone's input ( please email rarestance at gmail.com to find out about the specific topics we will be working on).

Here the assumptions is that in Italy itself a debate with the described characteristics is absent. Current debates are restricted to media promoted journalistic and current affairs exercises where the wide public is given very little room or chance to respond. Interestingly, academics outside Italy are often writing about Italian matters whilst few Italian scholars are.

Another interesting Italian phenomenon over the last 15 years, culturally, politically and socially, is the arguable influence that berlusconism, defined here not only as a cultural agent, but as an epistemology, has established in Italy over the last 15 years.

Unlike what has happened in US , or Australia for example, where various scholars and artists have voiced their views and expressed visions and interpretation of the impact of the Clinton or Bush political presidencies in US for example or of the Howard decade in Australia, in Italy there is a very small body of research concerning contemporary society.

The scarce existing literature concerns not just berlusconism but also various issues, widely considered by scholars and artists in their countries elsewhere, such as gender in contemporary Italian society, sexual identity, just to name a few.

We found it necessary that a socio-political critique of this kind was undertaken in Italy, possibly free from the constraints of institutional pressures or confinements.


Please check this blog for events dates or projects outlines.