The initial idea of the research programme was original and promising: using autobiography not only as an object of investigation, but also as a methodological means to look at the left wing culture in the second half of the 20th century from a different perspective – beyond the usual dichotomies of party vs movement, working class vs middle class, need vs desire, and so on. Starting from this perspective, my work goes beyond the current state of the art in at least two essential ways.
First, it establishes a unitary interpretive frame both for communist and feminist self-enunciation. The latter is represented by the concept of paradoxical autobiographical injunction which combines the idea of paradoxical injunction as developed in the field of the pragmatics of communication with the definition of autobiography, according to which the autobiographical form is characterised by the identity between author, narrator and character. Communist and feminist autobiography are considered not only as documents or literary texts. Rather, they are regarded as discursive mechanisms through which militants attempt to change themselves in order to create their new political self. However, this work on the self is endless: the autobiographical injunction is paradoxical, for it is a command that is impossible to fulfil. Becoming a real communist or feminist is thus impossible, but this impossibility has a performative value, making those identities possible. This conclusion also serves to broaden the idea of political performativity as developed in the works of Judith Butler and Ernesto Laclau.
Second, the concept of autobiographical paradoxical injunction is also vital o a better understanding of the well-known feminist claim that “the personal is political”. This claim is not only a political stance; it also produces specific textual strategies that identify different ways of constructing the feminist political self to challenge male discursive power. To this aim, Italian second-wave feminists have adopted three separate strategies in their autobiographical accounts: they used a schizophrenic discourse together with paranoid and catatonic self-writing, and in so doing, they trespassed the traditional boundaries of autobiography in search of a new female and human identity.
In conclusion, my research impinges on important facets of European civilisation. It not only reconsiders a recent part of its history from a different perspective, but also focus on one specific element, the forging of individual identity, which is quintessential to the constitution of the collective cultural identity. The latter is a crucial issue in order for European people to have a long and peaceful cohabitation on the continent.
