Introduction:

“I am an atypical mother”: Motherhood and maternal language in Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto’s poetry

“…Si è dovuto / con la paura agli occhi / dubitare di sé, e del corpo” (Vivinetto, 2018: 87–88). 32 Her narration articulates this gap into a feminine “ productive structural asymmetry” (Casarino and Righi, 2018: 16) that does not proceed through identities or oppositions, and is irreducible to cisgender women’s self-narratives. Her narration exposes the “central enigma […] of sexual difference,” which resides “ not […] [in] the already established symbolic difference (heterosexual normativity)—but, precisely […] [in] that which forever eludes the grasp of normative symbolization” (Muraro, 2018a: 167).…”

“…Vivinetto’s self-narration presents a further point of convergence with the feminism of difference: its reflection on body and language is mediated by a mother. As Cesare Casarino and Andrea Righi have highlighted, invoking the mother seems highly problematic, quaint, or simply old-fashioned “within intellectual discourses and environments”; and still, they conclude, “the question of the mother remains a crucial Gordian knot not only for feminist theory and practice but also for philosophy tout court ” (Casarino and Righi, 2018: 1). We might add that the word “mother” is rarely associated with the life experience of people who self-identify as trans* and, when it is, its derogatory use is instrumental in winning conservative debates about traditional parental roles and children’s rights.…”

“…16 This is a reference to the section that closes the volume Another Mother (Casarino and Righi, 2018). …”

“…38 Recent investigations of the figure of the mother from different scholarly perspectives have appeared in the following volumes: Morris and Willson’s (2018) La mamma , Faleschini Lerner and D’Amelio’s (2017) Italian Motherhood on Screen , Casarino and Righi’s (2018) Another Mother , and issue 5 (2018) of the journal Gender/Sexuality/Italy , which features the themed section “Reproduction, Fertility, and Parenthood: The Italian Case.” In addition, the book Liberati della brava bambina ( Free Yourself from the Good Girl ) by Maura Gancitano and Andrea Colamedici (2019) has redeployed a traditional feminist approach—the re-appropriation of characters from myths and fairytales—to discuss femininity and motherhood in contemporary Italian society. Finally, the theatrical performance Lingua madre ( Mother Tongue ) directed by Lola Ares (forthcoming) offers an intriguing creative reflection on the topic of motherhood.…”