The feminist practice of affidamento and the politics of desire
Workshop

June 13, 14:00. Budapest
OFF-Biennale (Location TBA)

In collaboration with Libreria delle donne
and Rita Kálmán and Eszter Lázár, curators at OFF-Biennale

With Giorgia Basch, Director of BilderAtlas and member of Libreria delle donne
Traudel Sattler, member of Libreria delle donne

Program

The Libreria delle donne di Milano (Milan’s Women Bookstore Collective), founded in 1975 and celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is one of the pivotal political spaces where the practices and the theoretical thinking of Italian feminism have been elaborated.
With this workshop, we aim to focus on the strength and originality of the practice of relation, and in particular the relation of entrustment, called affidamento. This exercise of female mediation requires each woman to take note and take care of their qualitative differences, and build dual relationships from there – at work, at home, at school, in social situations of any kind. Women ally and empower each other in the face of the world by recognizing the disparity among them, in a quest for freedom and self-expression. Through this practice women recognize that one’s own desire is the driving force for mediation. In short, we can speak of a “politics of desire”. Affidamento, in fact, acts on both a personal and political level, as it enters the system of social relations and modifies its symbolic order in and radical way. This practice thus goes much deeper than gaining the recognition of women’s rights – it fosters a cultural shift.
In an era in which traditional patriarchal structures are tottering, and representative democracy is in a serious crisis, some men have also recognized the value of a political practice of relation, which allows them to engage in self-awareness.

For registration info, kindly check the OFF-Biennale website.