Conference Program

This paper aims to analyse the theme of the democracy of care and the possibility it offers to weave networks and relationships that are alternatives to the patriarchal model, focusing on the representative example provided in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend.

The networks of ambivalent and complex relationships that develop between the women in the tetralogy, although they unfold on different levels and in multiple ways, can be broadly categorised into two main groups. On the one hand, the impromptu moments of confrontation in which the women find themselves discovering, with a light-heartedness and a playful spirit tinged with bittersweet tragicomedy, the difficulties they share in navigating the male rules (Ferrante 2012: 81). The shared experiences discovered in face-to-face encounters with one another and the resulting unexpected alliance forged in these occasional moments of self-awareness are, at the same time, both a personal and political prerequisite for the explosion of collective organisational movements that constitute the second broad category under consideration.

We will examine figures of men and women who embody patriarchy in its most overt forms of physical violence, but also in the more subtle forms of psychological violence and the more systemic forms of symbolic violence. In contrast to these models, we will seek to outline the complex exemplarity of the democratic project, which is articulated in the complementarity between the relational history of the biographical narratives of two women and Italian, European and global history, from the post-war period up to the 2000s. The moments of relational networks between women come to represent the ‘history’ and the ‘History’ of feminism: the representations, the destinies of women, the constitution of individuality and otherness in shared lives that are part of the overwhelming tide of the founding and widespread diffusion of Italian feminism.

The model of the democracy of care proposed by Ferrante is revolutionary from the very moment of its articulation and artistic assertion. Among the major gaps in a patriarchal literary history is, in fact, the scant literary representation of relationships between women (Woolf 2013: 174), whilst cultural and linguistic representations show a strong emphasis on the demonisation of female relationships (Federici 2004: 243).

For Ferrante, the choice to depict female friendship serves merely as a starting point for a broader symbolic and representational redefinition of relationships between women, paving the way for a political, literary and philosophical project that challenges the egotistical framework of the Subject (Cavarero 1997: 78).

Considering the foundational principles of feminist thought, a revolutionary democracy of care begins with a new conception of the relationship with mothers and friends. The narrative of patriarchal motherhood is subjected to critique so that it may be accepted in its ambivalence and analysed as the first form of mutual dependence experienced between women. Recognising oneself in the Other and the fundamental importance of sisterhood among women for each woman’s survival in the patriarchal world offer a narrative of friendship that stands in critical opposition to simplistic representations of relationships that are subservient to the male world.