Anatomia e politica in Carla Lonzi

Abstract

This essay is dedicated to Carla Lonzi’s theoretical and political legacy and analyzes her original positioning within the so-called Second Wave of feminism. Lonzi’s theoretical effort consists of an attempt to situate female identity in two crucial but seemingly distant elements: a bodily (sexual) difference explored from a post-patriarchal perspective and the separatist political practices of feminist consciousness-raising groups. The radical combination of these two elements – elaborated and practiced by Lonzi and her group Rivolta Femminile in the Italian political ferment of the 1970s – represents the auroral form of Italian thought of sexual difference that would develop in the following decade.