Assessments & Assignments: 

1. Reflexive Storytelling & student-led class reports

2. Group Storytelling

3. Conceptual Essay

4. Analytical Essay

"The personal is political"

is borrowed from the late 1970s women's movement, to engage with auto/biographies, storytelling and personhood of those Othered by Racial majority and oppressive mainstream. The course brings the life-world of the Othered forth to discuss

How sexualities, pleasures, bodies, Racialization and disabilities intersect and reproduce differences and natureculture divide? 

This question explores personhood embedded imaginations, imaginaries and identities to project ways of being humans and social actors. This course is a dialogue with students to spotlight personhood, knowledge of oneself and perspective into oneself are biographical experiences that become political. We shall explore multidimensions of personal and political in biographies of the politically engaged Othered. We study political biographies, autobiographies and life writings through flipping classroom model. Students receive the pedagogic contents before a class then the class becomes the point of broader discussions. This course is interactive dialogues between peers (including the teacher) and uses variety of resources (watching films, documentaries, YouTube channels) to stimulate students’ writing and assignments. This course is influenced by, designed and taught according to The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez.  Therefore, the learning outcomes are proposed in form of a communal act and growth. Upon the completion of this course, students:

1. Learn why the category called human must be abandoned

2. Experiment with storytelling and write/tell stories of their own

3. Engage in a supportive peer community with interest in social justice

4. Engage with political undertones one another’s biography and enhance their appreciation of auto/biographical genre

5. Select, think through and write from a living archive of multicultural texts and objects that best inform their individual projects.

6. Curate their definitions of political, personal, gender and social justice according to their lived experiences

CADAVRE EXQUIS: Di chi sei ? Who do you belong to?

By Maria Virginia Moratti

Cadavre exquis is a Surrealist game in which participants play by taking turns drawing sections of a body on a sheet of paper, folded to hide each contribution. Cadavre exquis is a game I often play, but this time, instead of drawings, I decided to put together pictures of myself. Macro pictures of micro details. Is this a start? Breaking down and reassemble in order to create something new? Probably it is a restart. But if this is so, why do I need to build up a new image of myself for the first pages of my autobiography?

 Why not to choose a close-up, a three-quarter portrait, or a full-body?

It is difficult to find and see myself in these fragments. How can they speak to me, and even more to others, if I can not recognize any part of my body in such a close encounter?

 In the beginning, it was a story about details, how they could shape me and vice versa, how I could shape them, a dialogue between selves, but after I brought all of them together, my story turned into something different. It shaped into a divergent perspective, surprisingly familiar for me. It became a story of belongings.

 As a kid, every time I looked in the mirror, I was not alone. In my reflection, I’ve been thought to see also those behind me, as if every part of my body had been given to me by someone else: the eyes of my mother, the nose of my uncle, the hands of my father, and so on for every inch of my physical being. I grew up in a family where family is everything. My name, too, is a tribute to it: Maria is the name of my grandmother, and Virginio was my grandfather. The word family, familglia, famille, familia has an ambiguity in its etymology. It comes from the Latin word familia, used initially to describe the totality of the slaves (famuli) subjected to a master. Di chi sei [figlia/moglie]? Literally, whose [daughter/wife] are you? Who do you belong to? This is a South Italian expression to ask someone you don’t know about her origins. When I was a kid, it was easy to answer: “I’m Nuccia and Paolo’s daughter.” And of course, it always came together with certain assumptions, as we lived in the North, we were not considered to belong anymore to the South. But with time, the weight of belonging to someone changed and drastically increased. It was no longer the feeling of being part of a place or a family, but it became being the property of someone or somebody, and I can perfectly remember the day when it happened.

Five years ago, in the morgue, I was looking at her for the last time. She was my best friend. In the fixity of death, she was barely recognizable. Her hands were forcibly joined together over her chest, her lips were colorless, eyes half-closed, yellowish and tight skin, and a heavy white bandage around her neck. Her body was there, but she was not anymore her body.

In our last call, she said to me she was feeling in prison, hoping to find the strength to leave her boyfriend as soon as possible.

But he was at my side, standing there, over-breathing. The sound of the air passing through his nostrils and mouth was suffocating for me. His presence was asphyxiating. Well, it has always been. Once out, he hugged me tightly for a long time. Then he said:

“Era mia e quindi deciderò io per lei.” (She was mine, so I will decide for her)

He reclaimed his property, as he did many times when she was alive. He decided how to dress her,  the make-up, which coffin to choose, which flowers, which colours, which picture, which song. He decided on everything, ignoring his choices once again her voice. He shaped the woman he wished. 

She was mine. This statement of property above my friend scratched me deeply. Since then, I realized we’re not owners of our bodies at all, and I’ve never looked at mine in the same way. I feel detached from it. Now, it is strenuously difficult to perceive in my reflection who I belong to. I’m scared of depending on others, allowing someone to say, You’re mine.

 I remember a bedtime story my mother told me when I was a kid. It was the story of Pigmalione and Galatea, an ancient Greek myth. Pigmalione, king of Cyprus, was famous for his sculpting skills. He was so devoted to this art that he renounced getting married: no woman could match the feminine forms and beauty he himself created. There was, in particular, one ivory statue, he elected his ideal of perfection and love. He called her Galatea, meaning she who is milk-white. Pigmalione craved to see the statue come alive. So, one day, he went to the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, praying her to grant his wish. He rushed home, hoping to embrace his Galatea, and when he arrived, he saw her inanimate body change, her chest rise, and her eyes disclose. They married.  I always wondered if Galatea was happy or not, and if not, was she allowed to think she wasn’t?  This story reminds me of Maria, my grandmother. She married when she was really young to an older man supposed to raise her as he pleased. She has never been happy. Maybe now that she’s alone, she could try to find herself, if there’s still a self to find. 

 From an early age, whether we like it or not, we women are used to dealing with the thought of being women and all its consequences. For me, it meant being constantly reminded, even if unintentionally, of the impossibility of belonging entirely to myself. This is perhaps why I needed to reshape my portrait, making it by myself, even if creating something abstract. Maybe incoherent for someone. But the more I look at it, the more it is me. Not something shaped by someone else, not something borrowed, gifted, shared, or taken. It is just a me, but a me that belongs to me.

This is story written by Virginia is a good example of how personal/personhood is situated in larger structures and experiential frameworks. It can be a good example for students to think beyond creatively about how personal is political