Italian partisan, politician and essayist, Lidia Menapace (1924-2020) meets Lunàdigas in Bolzano in 2014. She very generously talks about her life and her political and social activism, across two centuries, always in support of women.

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LIDIA MENAPACE: «Honestly it is not early. For me it is never too early, I wake up very early in the morning, I work well at night, I am mainly a night owl. However, between sleep and food, I can resist sleep much better, I can even go for two nights without sleeping, but I can’t resist hunger at all. The only protest I could never do is the hunger strike. I think I would give away anything for a sandwich when I’m hungry. As a matter of fact, if I go without food, I become sad; so much so that I usually say about myself: I suffer from hunger pessimism, when I become sad I think, “there will be no more revolutions, it’s all messed up”. As soon as I eat, my political hopes awaken too, so to speak. If I do not eat for a long time, I turn nasty, aggressive, I would bite into anything within my mouth’s reach. Now we don’t need biscuits yet to prevent me from biting your fingers, but surely I can prove to be fully awake.
Perhaps what I say seems unlikely, but I don’t have any specific reason for not having children, I simply did not have any. And thinking about my adolescence, my first period, which is the first sign that reminds you that you could have children, I have never been bothered by the idea: “will I have children, maybe I won’t”.
Only after I got married, when all the relatives started looking at my belly every time I showed up, for Christmas lunch, or when I visited my mother-in-law or my mother, everyone would say: “any news?” Since then I have started to tell myself, “is this what they expect from me?
I fought in the Resistance, then I passed my public exams, I have already proved who I am, why do they think that I should prove myself further?”
And I began to think about it, and it’s not motherhood in itself, but this obsession with motherhood, which forces you to declare: “I have decided not to have them” as a very punitive cultural superstructure, because it puts women who don’t have children, whether they didn’t want to or couldn’t, but simply they didn’t… As someone who is only 1.53m tall, as it happened to me for example, although no one will ever tell me: I haven’t grown up, period. Lidia is small, so what? Nobody sets up a kind of trial over this, while this obsession of having to necessarily prove that you can be a mother has always seemed to me a punitive cultural superstructure. A man can freely decide not to have children: think of a scientist, an important politician, nobody expects he should have children; whereas a woman can be a great scientist, or even a Nobel Prize winner, but if she has no children everybody would ask why. I find this to be a sign of culturally rooted female oppression from the Mosaic Law onward, from the Code of Hammurabi up to now, so it will take time to get rid of it.
Something has changed, for example, the question: “do you have children? ” which once was never asked upfront, thinking, “better not to ask”, you understand when a question is sincere, far from self-censorship or censorship; nowadays it is spontaneous, more out of curiosity, just like, “where do you live?”
Many think that I live in Rome but they learn without dismay that I live in Bolzano; many might think I have children, because I have many nieces and nephews, whom I am very fond of, so I may have some gestures or forms of language that could suggest that I had children. It belongs to the purely informative kind of questions also out of curiosity, but no longer unrelenting, spiteful, heavy as it once was. We moved from, “She had no children!”, some news you didn’t really want to share… or “You didn’t want children?” which is almost an inquisitive question, to the much lighter, “do you have any children?” dropped casually in a conversation. I noticed this change, and it is great!
I think so, not from personal experience, as I have no children, but I also hope not to be able to say it because I have been unpleasant or careless towards women who had children, but feminism did show quite a resistance towards the mother figure. If we talked about motherhood it was about overprotective mothers who don’t let their daughters free, this was always debated. The person, the woman, the feminist companion who reflected on this, without overthinking it though, who thought about spontaneously is Titti Valpiana a companion from Verona, sister of Mao, the one who deals with non-violence. Not many years ago, I told her, “Look, something unusual happened to me, while I was out relaxed, I overheard a conversation between young fathers”, and it seems to me an extraordinary thing. The first time happened to me two or three summers ago in Cuneo, I was there for the Partisans Association ANPI, who organised a camp on the Resistance aimed at young people; boys and girls took part in this campsite and sometimes the boys had small children with them. It was all very natural, I said: “Let’s have a closer look”.
One day I was sitting in a square in Piacenza, waiting to go to a debate, and I spot two young men talking and pushing two prams with small children, I must say I was eager to hear what they were saying. They weren’t talking about the joys of fatherhood, but about football and women, as any other young boy. I thought: “This is great!”
They add something, they activate this caring side, as while they talked about football, one touched under the blanket and said: “She needs to be changed”, and then gave her the bottle, naturally. When I talked about it with Tiziana Valpiana she told me, “Are you really sure that being a father means imitating the mother?” It seems to me a very relevant and acute observation, because perhaps men, I do not want to say that they are a bit dumb, although to some extent they are, but I could not prove it, of course but perhaps they have missed this dimension historically, and I believe it is a serious deficit in their personality building, because it helped me a lot coming to terms, even if not in such a dramatic way, with this thing about being or not a mother.
When I was a little girl, the thing I feared most was getting pregnant against my will. The fear of being raped, for example, was more present for me than the thought of motherhood; the fear of being forced into it, because what could you do if you got pregnant? I have been much more involved in issues about birth control, abortion, than thinking how nice to have small children.
I never felt this very strongly. I’ve always been surrounded, my brother’s and my sister’s children, and I have been a loving aunt who has been loved in return, and I have noticed that I was highly regarded by my nieces and nephews, even for important matters. For example: one of my nieces, whom I am very fond of, one day I visit them, they live in another city, I live in Bolzano, they are in Novara which is the city where I was born; she asks me what I thought about counselling centres for young women. And me, “They are very good”, “Please can you tell mom about it, because every time I bring it up, she tells me, “why don’t you confide in me”, I have nothing against confiding in her, but I don’t want to, I understand that she would love me to, but trust cannot be taken for granted. I need to see things for myself, just like at school and then maybe I can complain about silly things they teach us. To judge family centres I must first see it for myself .
This is just one thing. And also: I never preached anti-militarism, but my attitude was such that my two grandchildren chose to be conscientious objectors. I believe that the role of the aunt could also be interesting, it should be investigated, it would extend the loving circles. There’s a say in my dialect, “get off my shoulders”. It would let in some air in that tidy, warm, loving apartment, sometimes you need some fresh air, otherwise there is never any air change.
I am also sorry that feminism somehow lost its original aggressiveness, albeit wild, at its onset feminism was not tender, and was against family, and quite strongly too … one felt ashamed to say: “I love my mother”. And I remember that when my mother passed away at 92, I wrote a short thing on Il Manifesto for her, remembering that she used to say, “I was emancipated!”. What I remembered mostly about my mother, was her speaking of herself as an emancipated girl. She said it when I was a child, and to me and my sister this thing seemed absurd because during Fascism being emancipated meant a woman who refused womanhood, who pretended to be a man, and would be thought a woman of loose morals. Saying a woman was free, was not paying her a compliment, whereas it was for a free man. So, I was really puzzled and when my mother said that she was an emancipated girl, me and my sister questioned her. She explained that she had lost her father at the age of 4, he was a train driver, her mother was a country girl who did not want to go back as she had married a railway worker, symbol of progress, it reminds us of Carducci even. She had been very happy to leave her village, her husband was transferred to Genoa, she had lived in the big city, near the sea and so on. She didn’t want her daughters to be obliged to go back to the countryside, and tried to make them study. Honestly, I don’t know how she did it; she must have ironed thousands railmen’s shirts, she lived in a railway service apartment as her husband had died in the line of duty. It was an unpretentious apartment, where she worked like crazy, taking railmen on board, ironing people’s shirts, ironing them inside and out as it was costumery back then. She was always smiling, saying, “as long as I can be independent, I’m happy, against all odds”, and she passed this on to us daughters. My mother kept saying all her life, “they paid me less than a man for the same job, and when I got married they fired me”. And she said it so often that once, she must have been 70 or so, and I said to her, “Mom, it is too late for a dispute”, and her exact words were: “the union forgave them, but I didn’t”.
Although her marriage with my father was a very happy one, my father put his salary in a drawer, and she managed it as she pleased. But it was really hard for her having to ask for it. So, and I here conclude this ethical digression, she passed on this code to my sister and me, “girls, don’t depend on anyone and then feel free to do what you want: you can marry, stay with him, or let him go, as long as you never need to ask him for cash to buy your stockings, you can’t be independent in your head if you depend on him for your feet “. And I think it should be printed, a true ethical code, self-sufficient, perfect, circular. If my mother passed on this message to my sister and me, the very strong suggestion to be independent is because she herself was, she regretted not having her own money in order to be it in substance, although she was all the same, she could talk freely with my father, she was not simply a handbag on her master’s arm, as she used to define silent and subdued housewives.
How did my father influence us? It influenced me a lot for my political choices. I was born in Piedmont, in Novara, a city known only for a famous defeat by the hands of the Austrians, ‘the fatal Novara’. But my family was not monarchist, my father was a Mazzinian, this meant a lot: it meant having strangely enough at home a greater freedom than in politics, and also an invitation to pursue unconventional ideas. For example, when I got home from school, they used to ask me: “what did you do at school today?” and once I said: “the teacher told us about Vittorio Emanuele II, Father of our Nation” and my paternal grandfather, who was a grumpy old Mazzinian too, said: “literally Father of the Nation, he got pregnant all the girls who crossed his path”. Clearly, for me, from being our Father of the Nation Vittorio Emanuele II ruinously got off his high horse, and I began to be very critical towards the House of Savoy, to say the least. Another time I came home from school and I said to my grandmother: “The teacher taught us about General Cavalli”. Obviously, no one knows who General Cavalli is. A brief aside: Novara is a city of few glories, therefore we brag about the few ones we have.
This General Cavalli invented cannons’ internal rifling that is needed to make guns reach their target better, but nobody knows about it. When I mention General Cavalli, “Menapace is so well-read! “Instead, the origin of this amazing culture of mine is that once I go home and say:
“I have learned about General Cavalli “, and my grandmother,” What is this?” I explain he invented the internal rifling of cannons My grandmother says: ” to kill better, then! ” because the guns aim better, and I say: “Yes, I suppose,” and she says: “what on earth do they teach you at school?” So there was a critical attitude also on what they teach you, because teachers are not always right. “Why didn’t they teach you who invented paniscia?” Paniscia is a famous risotto we make, so I’ve always thought that yes, Egyptians built the pyramids, but how did they eat? Where did they sleep? And I always told myself how much more useful and even interesting history would be if, when we learn about one people, we could learn what they did, how they lived, not whether they were defeated or gloriously won a field battle. They might have done that too, but had to learn first how to survive. So this story of the paniscia risotto, for me it has always been symbolic: unless we free history of all that very heavy and useless surplus of military glories, defeats, dates, famous battles and dynasties, we won’t know true history.
History taught at school is reticent when not altogether false: reticent because it mostly ignores women, except for queens or some famous heroines. Women are the majority of the world’s population therefore if cuts out more than half of the people living on this planet. However strange it may sound, if women decide not to have children for a generation, the world ends, period. It’s not small matter, it should be passed on as power, as the main element, however, of the continuity of human history. We should not rely too much on godsend!
The idea of a God peering from above, “let me get that one pregnant, then that one…” to make humanity last longer makes me laugh. I find that not taking into account the original difference impoverishes knowledge, instead of increasing it. I think synthesis is the only swear word in the Italian language: from two you make one, it is a violent reduction, because there were two. Even the biblical account, as an historical source, says that male and female were created.
God created the human male and female beings, and this only for the human species. In the biblical account of the creation of all other things, he created fishes in the seas birds in the air, only for human species he created male and female creatures. It may be odd, but since it is a text thoroughly studied, you should get some opinion out of it. Just like that other expression, forgive me if I am talking like a machine gun, maybe I should speak more slowly. Along similar lines as ‘God created ‘: everyone creates now, the tailor creates a dress, hairdressers create hairdos. Frankly, I prefer recreation, much more within our reach, creation is a bit too much for me, a little too heavy, tiring. Everyone tells me: “you do create!” Frankly I prefer recreation!
If I had to think about myself, I must start from the beginning, because the first hurdle was with divorce, the first major issue that aroused the attention not only from women but from society as a whole. They started saying, “now they also want a divorce”. You might remember – or maybe not as luckily you are too young, the vulgar nonsense that Fanfani said about this, saying women want divorces they will run away with the first young man. He said that to the other husbands, it is unacceptable coming from a Prime Minister, a famous university professor. So, first there was the marriage, which for the Italian Constitution they tried to introduce the indissoluble matrimony. And they also made it. The only ones against were the few women. We risked to loose this too In the Italian Constitution, which is very beautiful but not very secular, there is Article 7, which I wish someone would fight for its repeal, the only article that I would really like to change, which includes into the Italian Constitution, the Lateran Pacts granting them constitutional value. It basically means that the legislation of that one absolute state that still exists in Europe called Vatican City state applies to our Constitution. Quite a problem!
I was a City Councilor in Rome, which was the most beautiful political adventure because the Campidoglio is amazing, all have been there, Andreotti… they were all there. I remember when, as I was City Councilor in Rome, and President of the Culture Commission, while Nicolini was Culture councilor. Nicolini invented the Roman Summer, which was an extraordinary happening under the sign of the ephemeral. When he began to use the Roman ruins, the great things, such as the Colosseum, the great Roman monuments to make joyous shows that went easily out of fashion, ephemeral, the Vatican was not happy. They protested because the ephemeral offends the sacred nature of Rome, the Eternal City. They officially opened a debate, which had to be held in the City Council. Women of the Roman feminism collectives who occupied Via del Governo Vecchio, which was the old seat of the Pontifical Government, entrusted me with the task of defending in the City Council the legitimacy of that occupation and everything related to this matter. I found myself with this task, and this was one of the first occasions. You may think that I am beating around the bush, but the debate on abortion has very deep roots. Nicolini stepped in: “The Capitol is right, this is a serious matter”. He was very ironic so it was clear that he was preparing some witty remark. “I think that Sant’Alfonso de ‘Liguori has already addressed your concerns”. The Christian Democrats turned pale as they had no idea who he was “He says that since we cannot know the Eternal, the only way to know it is to experience the ephemeral “. It is not true, or rather but it was not St. Alfonso who said it. Sant’Alfonso is a very amusing and cheerful Neapolitan saint, who wrote all the Italian Christmas songs, such as “From Starry Skies Thou Comest”. Now we have all learned’ Silent Night’ but then there were also Italian Christmas songs and some were lovely. Sant’Alfonso’s ones were also beautiful. From starry skies descending To a manger in winter’s icy sting it contained everything, and it is also a lullaby, a pastoral. Then everyone turns pale and Nicolini turns to me: “Is it true?” And I, a bit cheeky said: “Exactly, he says that one of the aspects of negative theology is that since we cannot directly define something concerning God, we can understand it through its opposite; by examining the negative side, we can see what it can be, upside down “. Enough with this. We happily won this campaign.
This was to say that even marriage, which one thinks is a rite, instead it is a sacrament hence it envelops marriage not with the value of social institution, which can have its rules, such as a law preventing men to marry twice if the wife is still alive, while Islam allows men to have up to four wives. There are ways to regulate the customs of a specific population, but we had to fight for long and many said, “yes but this thing, then it will really happen… she will run away…” I remember that I said that we should use strong words saying ‘enough with marriage as a life sentences?’ I’m against life imprisonment, also in a marriage. If you use this tone people will see it as a joke and you don’t get stoned in the square. They might say you are a bit wicked and shameless, lacking bon ton, a decent lady should not behave like that in the meantime we all laugh. But the same approach could no be applied either with sexual violence or with abortion because you cannot make jokes about sexual violence or abortion as on divorce.
Let’s talk about abortion. Basically, it was a crime, although not really prosecuted, but it was tricky, if a woman got an abortion she could be convicted, unless it involved a very famous midwife or something. Generally, it was a kind of tolerated offence. But being the cause or symbol of a crime, albeit tolerated, put a great strain on you. You could have an abortion and when you do, I’ll have you in the palm of my hand, because it is a crime and I can report you. You could not joke about abortion as a life sentence, because abortion is a unique event, it doesn’t have a continuity like marriage, so you had to find another approach.
The first approach was to say, “well, it’s just a blood clot”, I objected there and said: “it is true that it is a blood clot but it has a law attached to it, which then develops in a certain way”. So I have the right not to want it inside me if I don’t want it, not because it’s blood clot, like a rotted tooth that you can extract it with no problems, No, this is something different, and you need to dig a bit deeper into this matter, which meant you finally have to convince yourself and convince society that a woman is, just like a man, a person, a person is the end and not the means. And so whenever there is something inside your body that has been put by someone, using your body as a means to have a child or if he doesn’t want it instead gives you money to have an abortion, you have to say no whichever way it means you are just an instrument. Let’s see: if this is the result of violence, why couldn’t one get an abortion even if one gets pregnant after being raped? Strictly speaking too, it is a long journey that might begin with an act of violence, if, without wanting to, you didn’t look after yourself. Is it fair?
There is such a huge amount of problems that you realise that every time you tear one of these stitches from this tight seam, you breathe, you might not enjoy it, because maybe it’s a seam close to your heart. Deeper inside, something doesn’t hold together. Therefore it was always a mixture of acquiring freedom and not that freedom that makes you more reckless, but that forces you to be even stricter with yourself, more serious, more responsible. You give answers to yourself, you are the one asking questions. And abortion began to be this thing here.
Finally, passing through sexual violence as the most widespread experience was to hear about sexual violence, basically everyone was afraid of being raped. The fear was overwhelming and you started to think, “Holy hell, if I have to stay at home in the evening because I am afraid to go out and being raped, I am a second-class citizen”.
I remember, I used to live in Rome for long periods of time, because I worked for Il Manifesto, I am one of the co-founders of Il Manifesto, one evening coming home from the City Council, because I was also a City Councillor, and it was quite early, it must have been before ten o’clock, I arrive at home and I see a woman crying: “What happened?” “they stole my handbag, they robbed me” “There is a police station not far from here, I’ll take you there”. We arrive, they welcome her, they offer her a glass of water, they treat her kindly, and then they ask the crucial question: “What were you doing alone in the street?” “She wasn’t in the woods at three in the morning! I can understand, you get lost, fall and die, the wolf comes, I don’t know, but in Rome at half past nine in the evening? Madam, don’t answer!” We won’t be free until we are not free to tell someone harassing me in the street: “I was out looking for an adventure, but you are not the adventure I was looking for”. I don’t need a righteous reason to be on the streets; I wanted to go for a walk, can’t I? Or is that suspicious? So the whole issue involving sexual violence questioned the very condition of the woman as a recluse, a home recluse.
The conquest of freedom was a very long journey, it never ended; and when we finally began to say that the governance of one’s own body cannot be delegated to anyone, hence, whoever thinks they can, even your legitimate husband, means that this is always true. And believe it or not mostly people think exactly the opposite, that when the law on sexual violence was made, and the Italian one was and still is one of the best, there was absolutely no way, with two legislatures, to add that even if the rapist is the husband, he is still a rapist. There was no way to do it.
We presented a bill of popular initiative, we collected one million signatures, not easy in South Tyrol, as people thought we wouldn’t need it here. When you hear that there are thieves in South Tyrol, everyone is amazed: “Thieves in South Tyrol?”, or rather in Alto Adige, as South Tyrol sounds like an offense, you have to say Alto Adige which is a French denomination invented precisely at the time of Napoleon.
Is there any woman minister says: “I am a minister?” She’s there thanks to Renzi, she accepted that status… it is a small thing for a person to be a minister it seems that it is not a big thing. But there is only one they are all beautiful, well dressed, hair groomed, they speak well, they are cultured, they repeat the lessons learned as if they were their own words, but none of them talked about women.
Still nowadays, expressing yourself, as a female body as such, is either a commodity, showing your naked body in the square or on the screen, or else she must keep quiet and stay at home; like the old Venetian proverb ‘she must be pretty, shut up and do the houseworks’. This is the most profoundly rooted culture in the world unfortunately it is shared by all civilisations, if there wasn’t in Africa I would easily marry the African culture, but it is not so; or in Asia, but it isn’t! It seems that the whole planet identify itself in the male domination. And unless you make a very progressive political program and you prioritise it, because the world’s population is made up mostly of women. Whoever claims their democracy is representative is lying, because this is not true in any country. It seems strange, of course you are yours. But then one thinks: take Leonardo for example, who wrote ‘I am mine’ in his time and everyone hailed him as a genius, but if a woman says it….
The more society seems to evolve, and it does of course, I am not saying that washing machines are useless, and that it’s better to do the washing yourself, but also on less trivial matters. But there are points where there is such a fracture that you go backwards.
There is a something written by Rosa Luxemburg, whom I am kind of obsessed with, and at my age I can. Where she corrected Marx’s economic thinking, for which she was not acknowledged. You may hear that Rosa was a very generous woman, who even let herself get killed, but never that she was a thinking head, and she corrected some of Marx’s economic errors. Among other things, she was a great economist, and she analysed capitalism crises, the reasons behind the revolutionary defeats, a revolution was expected in Germany, at the time of the Weimar Republic whereas Nazism took over; a Revolution was expected in the Tsarist Russia in 1917, instead the Soviet Union came about; it was a major problem. She analysed that a system, such as Capitalism, which is a great system, when it has reached its full maturity, begins to enter into crisis producing crisis that at a certain point are incurable. Capitalism cannot be reformed, currently applying its very criteria we can say that Capitalism cannot be reformed, therefore whoever proposes a policy of reforms no longer proposes a policy of advancement; she demonstrates it in a note, I will explain why later.
When Capitalism is no longer reformable, the option is either socialism or barbarism: either you manage to move onto the other system that she called socialism, one can call it otherwise, but you cannot keep going slowly, expecting the crisis to linger spontaneously because the crisis can only worsen: at some point of the crisis barbarism takes over.
I want to consider this term which is not an economist one, it is not like unemployment, or youth job insecurity, no, it’s barbarism; it means you can no longer make yourself understood. The Greeks used the word ‘barbaros’ for peoples whose language they did not understand; it meant stammerer, saying incomprehensible words. Barbarism couldn’t be farther from socialism, barbarism grows before our eyes and ears in an impressive way, this is true. Does anyone use these arguments to open a debate? No, it always comes back to reforms.
I used the word authority in this sense long before Muraro. I was against to authority as power, but not in the sense of expertise, because when authority is based on experience, it is lighter and less cumbersome. I really like it when, and it happens more frequently, what a woman says is listened to, saying: “you are right”. People assume you are just a bimbo and you have to prove that you have a functioning brain.
However, it’s such a slow pace, that in those places which have a better capitalistic structure, they have more difficulties than in the slightly messed up ones. Capitalism in South Tyrol and I say South Tyrol and not Alto Adige on purpose, fa ridere dal punto di vista capitalistico, as it is really small. But it is so well structured, so well founded that if someone has a lot of money, it means they are good at earnig it, not stealing it. You immediately think: “this is a quiet place, in Bolzano you can safely go out at night” I myself do nothing but praise Bolzano, all those who come here find that Bolzano is very liveable, it is a marvel, it is true; I always say that Bolzano has become my Heimat, I know that one cannot say Walheim because you cannot choose your homeland. I would never go back to Novara, although my brother and sister live there and I am happy to visit them, but I wouldn’t trade Bolzano for any other place; because even my quirkiest behaviours, maybe because it was never a freak show, have not diminished the hospitality of Bolzano and also a certain consideration.
I answer this question with great pleasure, starting with my absolute vanaglory: I have come up with some terms related to a type of economy that is not mentioned, which I call economy of reproduction. We know and deal mainly with production, and Capitalism stands out as having produced so many goods, and making people pay less and less that Adam Smith really believed poverty would be overcome. It is true that poverty has been reduced in capitalist countries, without any doubt. However, Malthus immediately objected to him, saying: “if as a consequence of new production lines and of better health care, the population increases naturally, we will go back to poverty. He insinuated that even reproduction control was crucial to make a leap out of poverty. But since in order to control reproduction it immediately emerged that you had to break some religious law and Malthus was a Protestant pastor, a very pious man, he never even thought of a way not to have children, other than abstaining from sexual relations, hence ‘a sexual education for both men and women capable of governing this instinct as well. Instead he was considered truly selfish; when one says Malthusianism means social egoism. Which also concerns men, not just women.
I lost track of what I was saying… I have dealt with the economy of reproduction because it is something Adam Smith questioned but it’s worth asking it again. I told myself that in fact there is a whole series of jobs that do not produce commodities: for example, motherhood, from the point of view of the use of resources is work, but it does not produce commodities. Politics is work but it does not produce goods. So if it is a job it must have its own work methodology, which I call care. Care is not a job, it’s the way of working: all reproduction jobs must be done with care, because they are jobs aimed at people, involving people, and people are ends, not means. Every reproductive job must be carried out with care, from the presidency of the republic to the nursery janitor, I am not surprised that the presidency is so male-dominated that the idea of a woman president, raises questions such as, “Can a woman be president?” At the same time, can a man be a nursery janitor? It’s not an easy task. Politics is essentially reproduction and how can you talk about reproduction without thinking of the female body. So it’s not being a mother in itself, but if you cross this out, you make a real mess, because you start to think that politics, as Karl von Clausewitz said, is war carried on with other means, and if politics is brooding war, sooner or later it will give birth to it, if the true meaning of politics is the welfare of citizens…
Politics and urban planning come from the same word, it is the way of organising the city; so the links it has to that part of the human species called woman it is not motherhood in itself, it is this thing, let’s say original, ontological if we want to use a term more precise from a cultural point of view, which is being a woman, being a man; what is being a man? I don’t know. Up to now we received conflicting and desperate messages. But we, in turn, should stop telling the world that we are the ones taking care of the world, or else we will end up cleaning up everybody’s mess, you are stuck with everybody’s garbage, collecting rubbish is an essential, useful thing, but shouldn’t be just that. I prefer to link the economy of reproduction based on the caring, to the reproduction as a specific feature, in its foundational characteristic, of that half of the human species called ‘women’. Politics is all about reproduction, when we say structural reforms is stupid, if we think of politics. Politics is essentially reproduction, it is a way of being together looking for ways to carry on. So much so that the place of human coexistence is called polis, different from the time when a handful of people lived in the woods and men and women succumbed to the wild beasts.
I will try to live as long as I can, because I really love being in this world, despite everything, I really like it. I also like to be reciprocated for this. For example, I travel like crazy, as a nomad sometimes, and I generally ask those who invite me out-of-pocket expenses. If it’s an institution, I ask for the same fee given to any other speaker because I don’t think I should sell myself cheap, but if it’s a women’s or non-profit association, I only ask for travel expenses reimbursement. I usually stay with friends and companions, not hotels so they are cheap anyway, but mainly it seems to me that starting a hospitality chain is something I would like to be remembered for: my house can easily sleep three people, as long as they warn me, so that I am home, and not wandering around. I would love to leave hospitality as my legacy. I would also leave some housewife’s dictatorship. I am kidding, because I once wrote about this, about those housewives, obsessed with shining floors. It shouldn’t all be thrown away, I don’t think that… when a man can make risotto: “Oh, he can make risotto!” D’Alema went down in history because he could make risotto. Anyone can make a risotto and pasta, even lasagna. So I would also like to drop this thing from above: “Look how good we are!” Let’s say we work as a teacher, which is quite common, and at the same time we also go shopping, cook, etc. I would like to unionise this stuff a bit; I would like to leave also a kind of unionisation, I have been married to my husband for 52 years, and very happily so, he was not very good with house chores. A typical man from Trento with a mother and a sister… but I was not so happy with this, so we decided that since I like to cook, I would cook and he would do the shopping. But if I had to remind him what he had to buy, I could have do it myself; if you do the shopping, you must think of every aspect. But how can you fight with somebody you love? So I waited for the fridge to be completely empty, and that day, I said, “What a surprise! You take me out for lunch!” And he said: “but, really …”, “There is nothing to cook!” I swear, he never forgotten it again. So we had a kind of unionisation here, a separation of tasks. Housewives should be assertive enough, to impose such a thing.
I would like to leave this too: within stable relationships, there should be a separation of tasks.
Who should enforce it? Well, who did it before! So, let’s start with material things: the house I live in, will go to my direct nephews, it’s already arranged, as bare ownership it will go to them, they are four: two from my brother and two from my sister.
My books will all go to the Municipality of Bolzano, or to the Province, and I would very much like that the Women’s Movement would adopt the Convention as an organisational form. It would be great as my legacy, for the women’s movement, as far as I am concerned. I say it here, instead of writing in my will, which no one would look at, so this is a way to communicate my will. The Convention rules that each of us has a place to stay, but does not like to live only at home, so she goes out and convenes in a public place, it can be a market, a square, a hall, etc… And what happens there? She makes choices for her own convenience, which is more difficult to achieve. The Women’s Movement loves things that hurt, there is this sacrificial idea of women; instead I suggest, let’s throw parties, let’s eat together, perfect, let’s dance. I wish that June 2nd could become like the 14 Juillet in France, where everybody dances all night because the Bastille was taken. Let’s change this somber attitude towards our festivities, and instead let’s dance, sing, and so on: this is the Convention.
I am sure that birth control in Novara has been used for a very long time, because both my grandmothers had three children only. Contrary to what you were saying, my mother used to say said: “I’m not a rabbit “. There was a certain contempt for those who had many children. My mother-in-law, from Trento, had eight children, four of whom died. My mother said: “eight children, and only four survived, I had three and three survived, and we were all fine.”
I think Novara, but Piedmont in general it is a rather ‘sober’ region, the Piedmontese are not particularly bright, lively, joyful, but on average more secular than Trentino was back then! So much so that when we decided to get married and go back to where Ninni had won a competition; my only condition was that we moved to Trento and not Bolzano, because Trento was suffocating for me, you get there and they ask you, “You like Trento?”, “I don’t know yet”. The mere fact of not fainting before the beauties of the city is considered offensive. Bolzano was like a camp, there was a lot happening, but at least you could around in your pyjamas and they don’t even turn to look at you. I felt closer to this conservative secularism, which was better than Trento’s clerical conservation. They are not particularly praiseworthy terms, either one of them, but it meant that Bolzano became my Wahlheim whereas Trento, on the other hand, did not.»

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