An Unspeakable Viscerality

An anthology alone would not have been sufficient to understand what consciousness-raising and the practice of the unconscious were in the women’s movement of the 1970s—that is, the most creative moments of a collective reflection linked to personal experience and themes of the body. The original way in which a part of feminism attempted then, without ignoring the contribution of psychoanalysis, to rediscover and modify the constraints of a sexuality rooted in the imaginary as much as in the historical constructions of masculine and feminine, required a more appropriate reading, capable of setting thought in motion once again from a practice of relationships. Hence the choice of a lecture series, “The Practice of the Unconscious in the Women’s Movement of the 1970s,” which was held at the Association for a Free Women’s University of Milan in 1996-1997, from which the idea for this book was born.

Lea Melandri, editor of the journal «L’erba voglio» from 1971 to 1975, collected her first theoretical writings on the women’s movement in the volume L’infamia originaria (edizioni L’erba voglio, 1977). She has published Come nasce il sogno d’amore (Rizzoli, 1988), Lo strabismo della memoria (La Tartaruga, 1991), La mappa del cuore (Rubbettino, 1992), and Migliaia di foglietti (Moby Dick, 1996). She founded and directed the journal «Lapis. Percorsi della riflessione femminile» (1987-1997).