Where does the glorification of the femenine lead? Political achievements and boundaries in Italian gender-based difference thinking

Abstract

This article offers a critical analysis of the Italian feminist theory of sexual difference, and explores to which extend its political and theoretical proposal can be considered, as it claims, as an alternative discourse to the paradigm of equality, that is, a discourse able to embrace and give voice to female subject and her desire. In particular, this paper first investigates how, in Italy, the combination of theory and practice called «politics of desire» derived from a conceptual alliance between Luce Irigaray’s denounces and Carla Lonzi’s political thought. Then, it follows the intense theoretical and political debate that this politics of desire generated inside Italian feminism concerning the risk of dogmatism for a feminist discourse which does not accept to keep and value its own contradictions, failures and even its own silences.

Keywords

• teoría feminista
• feminismo de la igualdad y de la diferencia sexual
• política del deseo