৺ ෴ ර ∇ ❃ ꩜ ﹌﹌

৺ ෴ ර ∇ ❃ ꩜ ﹌﹌ is a feminist research group born in September 2020 in the virtual space between Palermo, Naples and Turin. Each person is somewhat connected to the South of Italy and came together with the necessity to discuss the intersection between feminism – both in its historicity and in more contemporary forms – and the Southern Question. The dialogical form as a collective practice of knowledge production and self-enquiry, starting from our own experiences and memories, is the methodological approach we share together, by looking at feminist self-awareness through a contemporary, critical lens. We are writers, researchers, curators, photographers, illustrators, historians, activists and a lot more. Our aim is to collect our shared thoughts in several forms that could become not only a publication, but we also want to question the limits of each of our fields of interest and working in a transdisciplinary way. From our discussions, we found a strong link between the representation of Meridione, whose tales and traditions have been too often ignored, oversimplified and exoticized, and the Women and their genealogies, that were also excluded or manipulated from the singular and dominant narrative of history. The Meridione, passive and backward but also magical, mysterious and undiscovered, and the Women of the South, are both the most stereotypical expressions of a binary, simplistic and othering representation. Our aim is to re-narrate these stories in a more complex way, re-positioning the focus on what is left in the collective unconscious and discussing the concepts of backwardness and progress, magical and mythical. We aim to give back the voices to the subjects (not exclusively alive or human) that move through the South of Italy, including us. Our research follows the steps of the women of the South, for example the Movements for the Occupation of the Land in the 50s and the protests connected to the Belice Earthquake in the 60s – 70s. During our meetings we discussed the theme of subjectivity departing from the writings of Carla Lonzi, and analysed the memories of Goliarda Sapienza, we were interested in the mythologies linked to the witchafts in the Aeolian Islands, and we collected some audiovisual materials (documentaries, experimental films) produced by women who were asking our very same questions in the past.