PhD Student Alessio Giovene Publishes Article in Journal Il Pietrisco

Comparative Studies PhD student Alessio Giovene has published a new article titled “Feminist Memoirs Illness and Disability as Thresholds of Rhizomatic Subjectivity in Francesca Mannocchi’s Bianco è il colore del danno and Claudia Durastanti’s La straniera” in the second issue of the journal Il Pietrisco.

The article analyzes two contemporary Italian memoirs to explore how illness disability and gender shape autobiographical voice and feminist agency. Drawing from feminist theory disability studies and poststructural approaches to subjectivity the essay considers how bodies marked by difference become sites of resistance rather than limitation. To read more about the article take a look at this blurb below. 

This essay investigates the representation of illness and disability in Francesca Mannocchi’s Bianco è il colore del danno (2021) and Claudia Durastanti’s La straniera (2019), contending that these conditions help the autobiographical narrators assert their feminist agency. The paper is divided into three parts, followed by the conclusion. In the first part, it is posited that both works may be regarded as two feminist memoirs that intersect discourses of disability, illness, and womanhood to denounce patriarchal oppression. The instability of these identity categories reveals the narrators as rhizomatic and nomadic subjects, asserting their feminist agency by challenging societal norms. The second part explores how Mannocchi portrays her agency as a mother with multiple sclerosis, who describes her disease as a revelation of the potentiality of life, and therefore chooses to reject the traditional idea of sacrifice associated with womanhood and the passivity often linked to the disabled. In the third part, it is argued that Durastanti finds her feminist agency after creating an intimate language with her deaf mother. Accordingly, she transcends normative femininity when reconsidering her mother’s nonconformity and approach to deafness, revealing the fluidity of any identity. Ultimately, both memoirs highlight the centrality of subversive bodies, rejecting the ideas of marginalization and passivity traditionally tied to femininity and disability. Moreover, both recast vulnerability as a way to claim resistance. So, both function as a strong political statement, asserting feminist subjects who are nomadic and multiple and challenging normative boundaries.

Congrats, Alessio!