Lea Melandri

Lea Melandri (4 March 1941, Fusignano) is an Italian feminist scholar, journalist and writer. She has established various magazines and published books on feminist theory.

She graduated from Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Following her graduation she worked as a teacher. Next she obtained her master's degree in history from the University of Bologna. Then she continued to teach at secondary schools until her retirement in 1986.

Melandri and Elvio Fachinelli started a radical feminist journal L'erba voglio in 1971 and edited it until 1978 when it folded. Melandri established a feminist magazine, Lapis, in 1987 which existed until 1997. She published articles in Noi donne, a feminist magazine. She and other Milan-based feminists, including Ciulia Alberti, Paola Melchiori and Adriana Monti, organised activities with housewives and factory workers between 1979 and 1983.

Her first book L’infamia originaria was published in 1977. Her another book was translated into English under the title of Love and Violence: The Vexatious Factors of Civilization in 2019. She has also written poems. She has contributed to the daily newspaper Il manifesto, and in one of her articles she criticized Pope Benedict XVI in 2004 due to his letter containing a conservative and traditionalist view about women.

In 1987 she co-founded Libera Universita’ delle Donne di Milano (Free University of Women), an autonomous organisation which continues to this day.

Melandri is a member of the Global Information Society Watch. [1]

Publications

• L'erba voglio (editor, with Elvio Fachinelli), journal, 1971-1978. (Italian)
  • Il desiderio dissidente: antologia della rivista "L'erba voglio", 1971-1977 (editor), Milan: Baldini & Castoldi, 1998, 329 pp; repr., Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2018, 249 pp. Anthology. (Italian)

• L'infamia originaria: facciamola finita col cuore e la politica, Milan: L'erba voglio, 1977; 2nd ed., Rome: Manifestolibri, 1997; new ed., Rome: Manifestolibri, 2018, 142 pp. Collection of writings originally published in the newspapers L'Erba Voglio, Rosso and Sottosopra from 1971 to 1976. (Italian)
  • L'Infamie originaire: pour en finir avec le coeur et la politique, ed. Psychanalyse et politique, Paris: Des Femmes, 1979, 127 pp. [2] (French)
  • La infamia originaria, trans. Carmen Artal and Luisa Hurtado, Barcelona: Hacer, 1980, 125 pp. (Spanish)
  • Original Infamy, ed. & intro. Leijia Hanrahan, trans. Howard Slater, Ill Will, 2022, 42 pp. Trans. of 3 texts ("Personal Modification Is Not Revolution", "The Original Infamy"--both published in L'erba voglio, and "The Irreducible Gap"). Publisher. (English)

• Lapis. Percorsi della riflessione femminile (editor), magazine, 1987-1997. (Italian)

• Come nasce il sogno d'amore, Milan: Rizzoli, 1988, 179 pp; repr., Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002, 187 pp; repr., Ravenna: Fernandel, 2023, 202 pp. (Italian)

• Lo strabismo della memoria, Milan: La Tartaruga, 1991; repr., Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto: Smasher, 2019, 161 pp. (Italian)

• La mappa del cuore: lettere di adolescenti a una femminista, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1992, 204 pp; repr., Milan: Enciclopedia delle Donne, 2021, 247 pp. (Italian)

• De las diferencias de género a la individualidad del macho y la hembra, Valencia: Episteme, 1996, 20 pp. (Spanish)

• Migliaia di foglietti. Mineralogia del mondo interno, Faenza: Moby Dick, 1996, 140 pp. (Italian)

• Una visceralità indicibile. La pratica dell'inconscio nel movimento delle donne degli anni Settanta, Milan: Franco Angeli, 2000, 283 pp; repr., 2002, 283 pp. Publisher. (Italian)

• Le passioni del corpo. La vicenda dei sessi tra origine e storia, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2001, 181 pp. (Italian)

• Preistorie. Di cronaca e d'altro, Naples: Filema, 2004, 186 pp. Selected writings. (Italian)

• Il legame insospettabile tra amore e violenza (with Stefano Ciccone), Arcidosso: Effigi, 2008, 62 pp. (Italian)

• Amore e violenza. Il fattore molesto della civiltà, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2011, 165 pp, EPUB; new ed., 2024, 171 pp. A critical, philosophical engagement of the psychological structures that propagate the continued oppression of women. (Italian)
  • Love and Violence: The Vexatious Factors of Civilization, trans. Antonio Calcagno, SUNY Press, 2019, 168 pp, EPUB. Publisher. (English)

• L'attualità inattuale di Elvio Fachinelli (editor), Milan: IPOC, 2014, 139 pp. (Italian)

• "Il femminismo a Milano anni ’70", Nov 2015. (Italian)

• "Il femminismo a Milano Anni ’70, Settima puntata, L’esperienza dei corsi delle donne. Il corso ‘150’ di via Gabbro 6. La Cooperativa Gervasia Broxon. 1976-1986", archiviodilea, Apr 2017. (Italian)

• Alfabeto d'origine: memoria del corpo e scrittura di esperienza, Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2017, 169 pp. (Italian)

• Gli avvolgimenti del tempo: tra pandemie, guerre, sessismo e devastazione ambientale, Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto (ME): Smasher, 2022, 256 pp. Publisher. (Italian)

• La vita impresentabile: femminismo e corpo teatro: un dialogo (with Antonio Attisani), Naples: Cronopio, 2024, 151 pp. Publisher. (Italian)

Literature

• Annamaria Tagliavini, "Lea Melandri", Enciclopedia delle donne, 2012; upd., 2023. (Italian)

• Andrea Hajek, "A Room of One"s Own. Feminist Intersections between Space, Women’s Writing and Radical Bookselling in Milan (1968–1986)", Italian Studies 73:1, 2018, pp 81–97. DOI. (English)

• Laura Cascio, "Lea Melandri e la ‘scrittura di esperienza’: la narrazione di sé come pratica politica", in Natura Società Letteratura, Atti del XXII Congresso dell’ADI - Associazione degli Italianisti (Bologna, 13-15 settembre 2018), ed. A. Campana e F. Giunta, Rome: Adi, 2020. (Italian)

Links

• Blog
• Blog (archived)
• Wikipedia