Paola Masi holds a PhD
in economics; she works at the Banca d'Italia. She has been on DWF's editorial
board since 1986, and is a member of the Roman group "Balena".
Reviews for DWF
Translations for DWF
Articles for DWF
Self-snaps, 1986, n. 1, pp. 11-21
Tracing a history of self-representation in feminist thought and cultural production the author highlights the passage from the critique of given male produced representation to the production of an autonomous knowledge.
She then analyses the prevailing and innovative "figures" taken on her feminist self-representation i.e. fluids and emigration. The modalities, the forms, the categories of these two "figures" are examined through a critical reading of several feminist writings, also in order to suggest the possibility of investigating and creating new forms of self-representation.
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Debate [Trial: let's listen: two meetings on politics], 1992, n. 16, pp.
7-23
Two encounters took place in December 1991 and February 1992 in the review's headquarters. The debate occurred in two moments, of which an account is given here synthetically but, on the whole, accurately. Elena Gentili, Ida Dominijanni, Annamaria Crispino, Maria Luisa Boccia, Annalisa Biondi, Roberta Tatafiore, Alessandra Bocchetti, Paola Masi, Vania Chiurlotto, Paola Bono, Marina Pivetta, Tilde Capomazza, Mariella Gramaglia, Rosanna Marcodoppido, Luciana Viviani, Rosetta Stella took part in the debate.
The principal issues were: the relation between social change and the creation of a female symbolic, in the connection of political practice and political action; the importance of language and of the reached, possible, necessary levels of comunication; the problem of the collective subject's possible residual quality, with the reasons which may create it and the ways of avoiding it by once more extending confrontation within the feminist community and beyond.
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"Partire da sé": observations on complexity, rules, political
action, 1993, n. 20, pp. 5-9
A critique of a concept of complexity which becomes an alibi for resistance to change, or an obstacle in the way of those who do want to change a given situation. With reference to the history of this concept within the feminist movement, the author argues that a different idea of complexity can be gauged from the lived experience of (many) women; such as to encourage clearly defined projects and produce real changes.
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MASI Paola - BIONDI Annalisa, Searching together, 1994, n. 21, pp. 4-13
The authors outline the main themes discussed by the group who produced this issue; the two of them, members of the editorial board of DWF, and other five women who responded to a letter which posed the basic questions they wanted to analyse. The letter addressed three main questions.
Has the feminist critique of emancipation as omologation produced a different conception of work, and can it really avoid the reproposition of a "genderless worker", a figure which cancels out difference and conflicts for the sake of competence?
What has changed in our relationship with the women we work with, how do we relate to them, what are our expectations, our positive and negative experiences?
Do we feel "at ease" in our work, that is to say, are we able to find our own meaning for it, thus developing strategies which go beyond survival, with an autonomous production of sense?
The group looked at their working experience from a subjective point of view; their aim was not a sociological inquiry on women's work, but rather the interrogation of their own perceptions about the meaning of their work, their relation with it, and especially their relationships with other women in that context. Indeed, one of the outcomes of the discussion was the shared conclusion that these relationships are an essential factor in the redefinition of the material and symbolic conditions of work.
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MASI Paola - CACIOLI Patrizia, The paradox of communication, 1994, n. 22-23,
pp. 37-42
The authors, members of DWF editorial board, look at a seemingly secondary problem, i.e. the difficulty a feminist journal often meets when asking an article to women who have achieved important positions, emancipated women who have a high awareness of their own worth and might be sympathetic towards feminism, but who are not personally active in it, not conversant with its debates.
It is a political difficulty; how can this gap be bridged, what relationship must be established in order to communicate the advantage, for such a woman, of a "gendered" reflection on and signification of her experience?
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MASI Paola - BIONDI Annalisa, Conflict, deferrment, mediation: thoughts upon
the 13th Conference of the Udi (Union of Italian Women), 1995, n. 26-27, pp.
12-17
The authors were present at the 13th Conference of the Udi (November 1994), and they look at the political forms and practises put into being by Udi women in order to manage and overcome the conflicts within their association.
"Taking into account the political conflicts, naming them - also in their 'irreducible' aspects; deferring them, taking and giving time, 'waiting for one another' in order to find a mediation: that is to say, recognising the politicity of the other's word, having a shared rule" rooted in the Chart of Aims (the statute of the Udi). In looking at this experience of a specific women's association, the authors identify some general questions about having and using "to our own advantage the capacity to produce rules".
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MASI Paola - BONO Paola, Rafts of Desire, 1995, n. 28, pp. 4-12
With a mix of personal memories and general observations and reflections, the authors look al the ways in which the geographical imaginary - the sites of desire - have changed in the last decades.
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F.O.B. [MASI Paola - CACIOLI Patrizia ],The lights of the market, 1996, n.
32, pp. 39-43
Is the globalisation of the markets "the magna causa of the end of the western model of welfare state and individual nights, or is it a great opportunity, since everybody can take part in a global market?". The article sums up the reasons given for the one and the other position, and proposes an explanation why in our contemporary times the mediation between economics and politics has become more difficult.
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Women without antecedents, 1997, n. 36, pp. 9-16
The figure "women without antecedents" is offered as a reading of the potentialities and limitations of the relationships between/among contemporary women. The paper touches upon several points: women's place in a "female genealogy", the search for a language to say totally new relations, the difficulty to think about the present. The same figure is used to interpret the "silence" of many women concerning the narration of their lives.
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What is not shown at the cinema, 1998, n. 37-38, pp. 19-26
Presenting a map of the film archives set up by women in Italy, the author identifies the criteria for their formation and use. She then puts forth an hypothesis for an "archive of desire".
"Thinking at/as a woman spectator, the archive should try and offer her a greater possibility of active participation than usually at the cinema: the possibility to manipulate, repeat, transform, apprehend, learn from a film; and at the same time it should invite her to confront the women who decided to collect and preserve that film".
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Dora's cough, 1999, n. 41, pp. 27-29
Almost a memory interlude, the author recounts the mechanisms often used by the consciousness-raising groups of the 70's as an occasion of self-representation and through it, of liberation from the suffering of being a woman. She also describes how body language and the theatre game were used for the purpose of political communication.
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For Annarita Buttafuoco, 1999, n. 42-43, pp. 2-6
On the 26th of May, Annarita Buttafuoco, feminist historian and founder of "DWF", died in young age. She is remembered and mourned on behalf of the whole editorial board by those who shared the review's new project with her since 1985 and who still work in it: Annalisa Biondi, Paola Bono, Patrizia Cacioli, Vania Chiurlotto, Paola Masi.
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MASI Paola - CACIOLI Patrizia, Change of Season, 1999, n. 44, pp. 41-46
During the last summer, a debate on the lasting under-representation of women in politics and in the academy took place in some Italian newspapers. The authors analyse the main contributions to the discussion and outline the contents of the controversy. Despite the differences, it is possible to retrace at least two common elements.
First, each proposal originates from a concrete network of relations among women, not from a think-tank or a political party. Second, the likeliness of the end of women's patience in bearing a systematic disadvantage in public life is underlined.
On this last point, the authors propose to go further into the analysis of single cases of conflict and of individual strategies to salve them, instead of rushing into governmental agenda.
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"Balena" in DWF, 2000, n. 47, pp. 4-6
The author, who is both in the editorial board of "DWF" and in <Balena>, briefly tells the reasons for an issue of "DWF" in co-operation with the group. The name of the group - the Italian word for "whale" - is derived in contrast from "Arcobaleno" (rainbow), the name of the humanitarian mission organised by the Italian government to help the refugees on the other side of the Adriatic.
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"Balena" through the notes, 2000, n. 47, pp. 12-17
Sentences, aphorisms, fragments from the meetings of <Balena> as they were recorded by the editors through their notes. This "rough material" is organised in three main areas, as they were identified during the meetings: care humanitarian intervention, conflict/conflicts, nights/needs. A final section is devoted to several snapshots of the group's political discussion and practice.
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MASI Paola - BONACCHI Gabriella, A dialogue on care, 2000, n. 47, pp. 23-29
During the war, the Italian government used the "humanitarian argument" to justify its military intervention in Kosovo. The construction of consensus was based also on the official involvement of some feminist groups in helping the refugees.
Although the political work with Yugoslavian women pre-existed the Kosovo war, and despite its original intentions, the feminist emphasis on care was paradoxically helpful in shifting public attention from the war to the humanitarian help to refugees.
Through the political analysis of some weak points of the concept of care, the authors try to disentangle the feminist approach from the dominant male approach and to give elements for a broader political discussion.
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Introduction,
2001, n. 2-3, pp. 2-5
The issue discusses some questions raised in DWF 2001, n. 1, on the relationship among different political generations of feminists. The form and the code of the issue is the dialogue, an open bet on the possibility of discovering new practices and ideas in the hand-to-hand confrontation between the oldest and the youngest generation.
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MASI Paola - GIARDINI Federica, From the voice of other women, 2001, n. 4,
pp. 46-55
The authors propose a dialogue with two contemporary women (Sontag and Roy) who intervened immediately after the events of September 11, 2001, with the aim of showing the political usefulness of starting (and not ignoring) the voice of (some) other (living) women.
Going further the analysis of Roy on the twin male leaders of terrorism and war, the concept of disloyalty is proposed in three perspectives: the possibilities to openly investigate the scared emotions to the events; the deep roots of openness to other, and hence to other cultures; the differences among war, conflict and duel.
Deriving from Sontag' s claim against the reduction of policy to a bad psychotherapy, the authors readdress "the war against terrorism" as a chance to critically understand and change the arrogant and forgetful political horizon which is one of the worst aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001.
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MASI Paola - GIARDINI Federica, Forum, 2002, n. 3-4, pp. 127-151
La differenza politica. Donne e cittadinanza (Political Difference: Women and Citizenship), Maria Luisa Boccia's recent book (Il Saggiatore, Milano, 2002) is the starting point of a reflection on the themes it presents. Masi and Giardini highlight the strong points of the book as well as the questions it leaves open.
Basile reflects on the limits of the discourse on the mother, especially dominant in Italian feminism in the 90s, and proposes to rethink an aspect of the maternal that does no longer pertain exclusively to sexual difference, but encompasses the question of the species.
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Flexibility, 2003, n. 1, pp. 36-40
Starting from the proposal of a "flexible citizenship" for the new Europeans, the author reflects on the ambiguities of flexibility as a concept and a "value". She tries to unveil the link between the meaning of flexibility and the rhetoric of the "female society", a new (the last?) version of the traditional male view on society for the third millennium.
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(edited
by) We young women of the First Republic. Interview with Tullia Carettoni, 2003,
n. 2-3
A Senator for 30 years, now the President of the UNESCO Italian National Commission, the author looks back at her political biography and especially at her parliamentary activity on behalf of women.
The fight for emancipation following World War II is seen as analogous to the fight for liberation of formerly colonised countries. The fact that today the Italian Left seems little interested in women's politics reflects a provincial political vision and an incapacity to look farther and think in wider terms.
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The paradigm of the prevention. Editorial note, 2003, n. 4, pp. 2-4
The passage from pre-emptive to preventive war marks the 2003 version of the conflict with Iraq. But prevention is also a praxis and a paradigm useful to keep at bay all the "peaceful" inhabitants of the Western economic system.
It is the paradigm of our contemporary society, obsessed by the fear of risks and by the will to control: one is a good citizen if one, individually and privately, prevents all possible mishaps in life. The social causes of fear and insecurity are cancelled in a process which depoliticises both the personal and the political.
Furthermore, prevention is a gendered practise, both because it is women - more women than men - who take care of it and because they are its "privileged" targets.
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The machine of science, 2003, n. 4, pp. 50-57
A double level of analysis - a record of personal experiences and a reflection on feminist critiques of the dominant scientific paradigms - are proposed to question the construction of scientific knowledge and practice.
The prevention of diseases, the medical protocols and the development of bio-technologies are investigated to underline the ambiguities and metaphorical meanings of the present techno-scientific project.
The contemporary version of the old reduction of scientific knowledge to a 'law of nature' has strong epistemological similarities with the shift of politics into bio-politics: against this process the authors proposes a ("patient") re-signification of the complex personal and social experiences with science and politics.
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This issue enquires on Asian film productions, especially India e China, in order to experience the gaze of some "natwes", some socalled "others" on themselves e on us.
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MASI Paola - CACIOLI Patrizia, In terms of utility, 2005, n. 2-3, pp. 8-11
The authors explore the possibilities of using the concept of ‘utility’ in a feminist perspective. The advantages and drawbacks are considered on the basis of their political experiences. Learning from their personal perception of art, the concept of ‘utility’ is seen as related to ‘utensil’, whose value is based in (dynamic) use.
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MASI Paola - RUSSI Valentina, Spacial rhythms, 2005, n. 2-3, pp. 12-19
A reflection on the political meaning of «making space» in relation to art, focusing on the political potentialities of reception. Going beyond an idea of space as «public space», in an attempt to think space as the mobile site of invention, where e-motions find their rhythms and memory takes form – where one learns from the body, and the energy stemming from conflicts can be discovered and controlled.
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Reviews for DWF
BRUNO G. - NADOTTI M. (a cura di), Immagini allo schermo. La spettatrice e il
cinema, Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier, 1991
rev. by Paola Masi, 1992, n. 16, pp. 48
CAVARERO A., Nonostante Platone, Roma, Editori Riuniti, 1990
rev. by Paola Masi, 1991, n. 15, pp. 60-61
MELANDRI L., Lo strabismo della memoria, Milano, La Tartaruga, 1991
rev. by Paola Masi, 1992, n. 16, pp. 47-48
MIGALE Lia, Imprenditoria femminile e sviluppo economico, Roma, La Nuova
Italia Scientifica, 1996
rev. by Paola Masi, 1997, n. 34/35, pp. 132-134
MURARO Luisa, Lingua materna scienza divina. Scritti sulla filosofia
mistica di Margherita Porete, Napoli, M. D'Auria, 1995
rev. by Paola Masi, 1997, n. 36, pp. 87-91
J. PATERSON e M. LEWIS (a cura di), The Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics,
Aldershot: Edward Elgar 1999
rev. by Paola Masi, 2001, n. 1, pp. 79-83
SBISÀ M. - FABBRI P., Appunti per una semiotica delle passioni. Passioni.
Rileggendo l'Encyclopédie, "AUT-AUT", 1985, n. 208 (luglio-agosto)
rev. by Paola Masi, 1986, n. 1, p. 133
Translations for DWF
KUMAR-D'SOUZA Corinne, Looking through new eyes
tran. by Paola Masi, 1995, n. 25, pp. 51-63