Spaces of communication
Nadia Gambilongo
Hard are the times here, in the south of Italy, where even daily life is difficult to be lived and almost impossible is the prediction of future. It is in this scenery of bleeding wounds and much destruction at our back that MEDiterranean MEDIA is bravely undertaking a new journey towards itinerary and experiences which, we hope, will be rich and intense.
The first editorial enterprise that MEDiterranean MEDIA will edit is a short story of a young woman writer, at her first literary experience. This first work will be selected through a literary competition, to be announced in December 1996, and will become part of the Collane di MED. a collection of pearls to be stringed one after the other.
Young writing to pursue new ways, new forms of growth, in which the sea dividing life here and life there is, this time, a sea of women, in which the "displacement" within oneself and oneself and the others is a condition to increase awareness, to refine the quest for freedom.
We assure continuity to Mediterranean Review, which will be published regularly starting from this very issue; we are particularly glad to inform about this our more affectionate readers, worried about the future of the review: and Mediterranean Review will be published until we wish and need to write on its pages.
We will regularly update the data bank of the main women centres; information that we have been collecting in these years: about 2000 addresses of women located in Europe and the Mediterranean, with sites of excellence in several continents: The activities of the centres in the data bank range from research to training, from political activism to service in the social field, furthermore there are numerous addresses of individual women, scholars, researchers, women engaged in politics and the civil society. In a short time, the data bank will be widened by entering the women NGOs at international level.
We will promote the use and diffusion of communication technology, the use of telecom networks, which will allow us to enlarge the network of relation by shortening the distances among the women who live in different and distant places.
We will use Internet and the multimedia to know about and improve the differences among us, to contend with global knowledge, to favour the transmission of "situated" knowledge.
"The main threat against diversity derives from the habit of thinking in terms of "monoculture of the mind"; this wipes out the perception of diversity as well as diversity itself. With diversity also the alternatives disappear, thus creating the syndrome of the "lack of alternatives". Too often the lack of alternatives is justification for the total uprooting of nature, of technology, of community and of the whole civilization. The alternatives exist but are not taken into consideration: to do it would require a different context, characterized by diversity. Moving to diversity as a way of thinking and a context in which to act frees multiplicity of choices".
The dichotomy local/universal is wrongly applied to the native traditions and the western knowledge, but the western knowledge is local tradition that has imposed itself in the world through the intellectual colonization.
This assertion by Vandana Shiva particularly fits the south of Italy which, for years, has vainly followed the northern development, without being able to build up an autonomous way, adequate to its social reality, to its natural characteristics.
The impossibility to express positions different from the dominant political culture and from the practices of omertà has in reality prevented, in many suburban areas, the development of the rights of citizenship and the growth of awareness.
The diffusion of different situated knowledge, the circulation of the differences through the network of relation can create changes in manifold directions. This practice of changes can be strengthened by projects of cooperation and exchange. Side by side work, which the projects of cooperation often need, together with remote communication, allow the experimentation of new ways of living, in respect of the differences, mediating the conflicts, in harmony with places.
The partnerships, created by MEDiterranean MEDIA in these years through the network of relation at international level, have gone towards this direction: the cooperation with WILFP, the exchanges with the Mediterranean Women Association (AWMR), the contacts with the European Centres of Women's Studies, the participation in the "Sisterhood is Global Institute", etc.
The politics of MEDiterranean MEDIA has somehow consisted in constantly being "on a journey": with little, essential baggage, having one's roots, the reasons of one's positioning and the sense of responsibility for that particular point of observation; all this, together with the need of knowing, great curiosity and a sincere predisposition to offer the glance, the ear and therefore the whole body to the other women, to their experiences, in order to exchange experiences and find ourselves deeply changed after each encounter.
Another project, which MEDiterranean MEDIA is, at the moment, carrying out together with the Centre of Women's Studies "Milly Villa" of the University of Calabria, deals with the organization of a national conference on "Southern Women and Northern Women". The organization work will take a year, there will be intermediate, itinerant meetings among the women who live in Italy, having different departure places and different biographies, therefore also the immigrant women will be the centre of this comparison.
The comparison between northern and southern women will be successively widened in another conference among the women of northern Europe and the Mediterranean area.
Among the lines of investigation of the intermediate meetings, which are preparatory to the conference: individual experiences; (physical and mental) places from which to start; improving the differences; racism within and outside us; the search of points of contact favoured by reciprocal displacements. Among the woman journey mates of this preparatory work there are many knots of the MEDiterranean MEDIA network. Those who are interested may contact the editorial office.
In this issue great space has been given to the experiences of women who, because of war, are living as refugees, inside and outside their countries, but who have transformed their condition in an occasion to grow up, acquiring nomadic awareness. The experiences gathered during the 5th Annual Conference of the Association of Women of the Mediterranean Region, held in Cyprus last June, have been an important reference.
