In the extensive introduction to her 2019 volume Feminism, Violence, and Representation in Modern Italy, Giovanna Parmigiani notes that the motivation for her study stems from the recent ‘emergency of an emergence’, that is, ‘the gradual legitimization of the emergency of femminicidio within Italian public opinion, from being an unknown word and phenomenon to making it to the front page of newspapers’ (p. 2). What is especially striking about the volume is its vast scope, which includes, along with the exploration of violence against women in its multifaceted manifestations and of the enhanced visibility of the word femminicidio (femicide) in the years following 2012, an accurately recounted and detailed ethnographic study based on the Salento region of Italy (rightfully considered by Parmigiani a hyperplace, in the sense of the term developed by Italian anthropologist Bernardino Palumbo), which the author conducted over the course of five years, from 2011 to 2016, with an impressive total of 20 months of fieldwork and ‘participant observation among feminist activists’ (p. 2).
Chapter 1, Locating Violence in Salento and Beyond, defines the framework for the study by tracing back violence as a field of study for the author and explaining how her ethnographical work focuses on the rhetorical and representational spaces that violence against women shapes, both locally and nationally, in contemporary Italy. Parmigiani aptly directs the reader's attention to how it is not just the incidence of violence against women and its forms at the core of her study, but also the way violence manifests itself in rhetorical and inflective elements that inhabit women's everyday lives. As she notes, violence, ‘as a discursive device … shapes the personal and political lives’ of the women she met and interviewed (p. 33).
In Chapter 2, Women before Women: Italian Feminists and the Struggle for Visibility, Parmigiani identifies visibility and recognition as a fil rouge for her analysis, providing an accurate historical dimension for Italian feminisms that serves as firm grounding for her ethnographic study. Particularly engaging is the section Affect and Conflict: Sensibili Guerriere / Sensitive (Sensory) She Warriors (the title is a homage to a 2011 anthological volume edited by Federica Giardini on women's strengths and unending fights), in which Parmigiani draws from the personal experiences of her many informants and from an articulate reflection on her early encounters with Italian activists to analyse and reframe the often conflictual dynamics that shape the rapport of different generations of Italian feminists.
At the very core of the volume is Chapter 3, The Creation(s) of Femminicidio, which shows through a multiplicity of examples drawn from national mainstream media and political adverts how Italian women are most often depicted as victims, and details how widespread such representations of victimhood are. Towards the end of the chapter, Parmigiani then demonstrates the need to reframe the discourse, moving away from the idea of the Italian woman as a mater dolorosa.
Chapters 4 and 5 (respectively titled Being Witnesses, not Victims: On the Affective Politics of Representation and Producing Witnesses: The Perlocutionary Effects of the Politics of Representation) build on the work defined at the end of Chapter 3 to demonstrate how a full and nuanced understanding of the representational rhetoric of victimhood is at the basis of activists’ work, with the purpose of regaining dignity and finally breaking away from patriarchal constraints. In Chapter 4, Parmigiani focuses on her work alongside UDI (Unione Donne Italiane) activists in Salento. As fully demonstrated in Chapter 5, the many performances and exhibits that she participated in and witnessed during her fieldwork ‘offered an alternative and ambiguous representation of what being a woman was or should be, in contrast to common representations. In doing so … they promoted dissensus’ (p. 156). At the centre of the discussion in this section are, specifically, the photographic exhibition Alma de Tierra (Spanish for Soul of the Earth) by Lucia Sabato, and the 2013 event Disanimate, put together by DNA Donna, from which the author draws more general conclusions on the role of feminist activism in transforming women's roles from victims to witnesses.
Finally, Chapter 6, Fare-Come-Se (Doing-as-If) and Artistic Engagements: Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Politics of Becoming, moves between the ethical and aesthetical realms, confirming Parmigiani's work as a nuanced and rigorous study that is ready to address ambiguities and uncertainties. The chapter concludes with the brief section Dignity, Shame, and Doing-as-If, which cohesively defines the in-progress (and thus transformational) quality of the work of her informants and the activists the author worked with: ‘Dignity was not something necessarily already given but was framed as a practice, as something that needed to be cultivated and recognised – setting the political activism of my informants, again, in the realm of becoming, rather than in the realm of being’ (p. 180).
The volume's brief but intense Conclusion further reconnects the specific fieldwork and research to wider questions that affect women worldwide and outlines many new possibilities for subsequent studies that go beyond Salento. In sum, Parmigiani notes, continuing this work has the potential to ‘build bridges among marginalised communities worldwide, disarticulating current “regimes of perception” and fostering new dimensions of dissensus’ (p. 186). The volume includes an extensive and updated bibliography, including many important websites, which will be sure to prove a powerful tool for scholars intending to pursue research in the fields of violence against women, Italian feminisms, and beyond.
With her volume, Parmigiani has succeeded in providing a comprehensive and lucid analysis of the multiple ways in which violence affects the lives of women in contemporary Italy, and she has set a viable and engaging pathway for both academics and activists aiming to effect much needed and urgent societal changes.
