Patriarchal systems of power are based on violent practices of coercing bodies, going so far as to suppress them if perceived as rebellious. That’s also why with a multi-voiced score the women journalists called for #TruthforDaphne
By Paola Zaccaria*
A trans-Mediterranean, feminist and anti-violence oper/action was staged in Bari and Lecce that is absolutely unmissable for all* who pose the knot of violence against women and against all difference as an inescapable issue that must be addressed in order to lay bare the violence of still patriarchal systems of power that are based on violent practices of coercion of bodies, going so far as to suppress bodies if they are perceived as rebellious.
The second Mediterranean Women Journalists Forum organized by the Giulia giornaliste (Journalists United Free Autonomous) association on an idea of Apulian journalist Marilù Mastrogiovanni, in collaboration with various Apulian and national entities, is dedicated to Maltese journalist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia. The women journalists and writers who composed the score of this multi-voice, multi-lingual, two-act (Bari and Lecce) opera called for #TruthforDaphne, “illuminating” her investigations.
The two-day event builds a cross-pathway to the goals of all nonviolent, gendered, and questioning apparatus journalistic practices, is very much in consonance with the policies and reflections of the transnational anti-violence network Not One Less which has just a few days ago given birth to an extraordinary anti-violence plan that will be embodied in the bodies of women and men who will act it out on the streets of Rome on Saturday, Nov. 25, in a large march.
Focusing on the issue of certain communication’s complicity with global systemic forms of violence, the GIULIA network illuminates one of the nodal issues addressed by the Not One Less network, that of communication: each intervention focuses on #PressPhobia: the new war on information.
The women journalists, scholars and writers who spoke come from various shores of the Mediterranean. They are courageous, authoritative, heretical women, dissenters from the multiple written and unwritten sexist rules of the different countries and cultures from which they come. They bring words, critical analysis and practices of disconnection from the still colonialist patriarchy everywhere that can only strengthen and enlighten us in building a nonviolent politics and coexistence. They are the sisters from the lands of conflict to whom Marilù Mastrogiovanni, driven by her unstoppable ideational, planning and utopian force, has asked to collaborate in building a vision of Mediterranean coexistence without walls. To all of them, to the group that collaborated with Marilu, our boundless thanks.
*activist and researcher at S/Murare il Mediterraneo (smuraremediterraneo.wordpress.com) and Gender Archive at the University of Bari (www.facebook.com/ArchiviodiGenere)
