Preface
This issue, realized with Claire Fontaine, positions itself in the many continuities of a previous one—May no. 4, published in October 2010, that presented a selection of foundational resources from the Italian feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s (with texts by the Milan Women’s Bookstore, Carla Lonzi, Lea Melandri, Antonella Nappi, etc.) At the time, Fulvia Carnevale, an assistant of Claire Fontaine and the guest editor-in-chief, edited the group of texts and signed the introduction. Given a lack of time and means, the texts were only published in English.
For this issue, we have decided to put the French translations online a few weeks after publication. The texts published here are for the most part interventions from two London symposiums that took place in 2015 and 2016, whose specific issues Claire Fontaine’s introductory text will illuminate. A number of these essays take direct inspiration from the textual sources introduced in May 4. With this second chapter, the revue seeks to trace an editorial line more emphatically marked by feminist questions stemming from this Italian history and to re-interrogate complex concepts such as self-abolition, self-consciousness and separatism—or, to cite Marina Vishmidt, to contribute towards a “way of thinking the affirmative and negative moments of any radical emancipatory movement.”