The Mothers of Us All: Extracts, with comments, from the ‘Yellow Catalogue’ published by the Milan Women’s Bookstore

The present paper is Paper No. 1, and forms part of a series together with Paper No. 2 (From novels to figures: themes and strategies of a political practice – Part I), and Paper No. 3 (From novels to figures: themes and strategies of a political practice – Part II; Sexual difference: an occasion for being). Papers No. 2 and No. 3 are forthcoming in Law & Literature. The three papers constitute a whole project of translation and commentary composed of translated extracts from the “Catalogo n. 2 – Le madri di tutte noi,” published by the Milan Women’s Bookstore in 1982. The idea for the project was conceived by Silvia Niccolai and Angela Condello, who selected the extracts and provide the written commentaries on the original texts. The Catalogue, in which we find collective discussions, pages of personal diaries and, overall, the enterprise of a group of women debating over their literary symbolic mothers (who to read? And why?), is an fascinating example of the collective work of feminist groups of women, the themes they addressed and their methodology. In particular, the debate on the literary “mothers,” on the female authors that can contribute to the formation of a feminine symbolic, shows the kind of concerns of difference feminism in Italy (especially during the Seventies). The text offers, in other words, the opportunity to enter a world that nowadays – with the new, varied streams of feminism and the battles over the neutralization of sexual identity – is less frequent, and nevertheless we find it important in order to understand the social, political and cultural power of feminism.