Riguardarsi

Behind the signatures of the posters displayed in the exhibition—of which those reproduced in this Catalogue constitute only a part—are the subjects: that is, the women, groups, associations, and more or less formalized structures that adopted this tool of communication and self-representation. We therefore felt it useful to offer some essential outlines of their biographies, as a kind of thread to better navigate the exhibition and, above all, as a further tool for knowledge.

It was not a simple task, and the outcome is sometimes not entirely satisfactory, because the chronological trace of some of those subjects has been lost, if not their political aims and initiatives: dates of birth and dissolution, for example, are difficult to reconstruct with precision, and organized information tools are lacking. Even the Archive of the Fondazione Elvira Badaracco, although quite rich, is silent on some groups or does not preserve—though we wonder if they were ever produced—reliable documents regarding essential “biographical” data: as Emma Baeri observes, the groups that formed the Movement at its origins, and not only those, developed a complex, omnipotent relationship with time, to the point of suppressing its recording.
We have considered here only the groups and collectives present in the exhibition with their posters or flyers: naturally, those that did not produce this type of document for various reasons are missing, as are some of those groups that, despite having produced them, were not included in the exhibition due to the necessary selection dictated by the nature of the initiative which, however broad, could not be exhaustive.

Therefore, with these “biographies”, we did not intend to provide a mapping of the feminist movement and the Italian women’s political movement, nor a history of it.

Nevertheless, both the exhibition and this Catalogue represent a “work in progress” for us, a possible stage in the critical reconstruction of a complex political history in which the Foundation intends to remain committed, with the collaboration of all the groups and all the women who have already participated in various ways in this first phase and whom we thank here, as well as other groups and other women who wish to join us in continuing this project.

See also the Riguardarsi pages on the storiadelledonne website