Feminist Duration: A Reading Group on Feminisms, Consciousness-Raising and Leave-Taking
Tues 1 December, 7pm-9pm
SPACE, 129–131 Mare Street, Hackney London, E8 3RH
The next meeting of the Feminist Duration Reading Group will focus on translation as a feminist practice.
Together we will read sections of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's "The Politics of Translation" from her book Outside in the Teaching Machine (1993). Though the essay does not relate directly to the reading group’s primary focus on the texts and practices of Italian feminisms, we will consider how Spivak's emphasis on translation as an imperative for feminist politics relates to the group’s overall aims and ambitions.
Three short introductory excerpts, taken from Italian feminist texts in English-language editions, are included as supplementary reading. Teresa de Lauretis and Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum's translation notes, though brief, highlight several issues relating to the interpretation of Italian feminist texts in a second language. Navigating these issues, Sandra Kemp and Paola Bono's introduction to The Lovely Mirror: Italian Perspectives on Feminist Theory presents, instead of a traditional introductory text, a Q&A between a British academic and her Italian colleague.
The Feminist Duration Reading Group is open to all. Please contact the Feminist Duration organisers if you would like to receive the readings: feministduration[at]gmail.com. Please contact Persilia for directions [email protected]
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty "The Politics of Translation," in Outside in the Teaching Machine, London: Psychology Press, 1993.
Various excerpts including:
de Lauretis, Teresa "The Practice of Sexual Difference and Feminist Thought in Italy: An Introductory Essay," in The Milan Women's Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990
Chiavola Birnbaum, Lucia Liberazione della donna / Feminism in Italy, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1986
Kemp, Sandra and Bono, Paola "Introduction: Without a leg to stand on," in The Lovely Mirror: Italian Perspectives in Feminist Theory, London: Routledge, 1993