M45 Rivolta Femminile

On Woman’s Absence from Celebratory Manifestations of Male Creativity (1971)

The Italian feminist separatist group and publishing house Rivolta Femminile (Feminine Revolt) was founded in Milan in 1970 by the writers Carla Lonzi (1931–82) and Elvira Banotti (1933–2014) and the artist Carla Accardi (1924–2014). The group’s most articulate voice was the brilliant Lonzi, who had been a prominent art critic in Italy until she came to realize that creativity, like society, was not without its compromises and mythologies. Having lost her illusions about the freedom of artists, she abandoned her profession, and began to promote a highly politicized and radical alternative to society and the arts through her writings for Rivolta Femminile. Lonzi believed that art, as it stood, needed to be eroded away, and that those artistic roles, identities and definitions that had been created by a paternalistic society had to be rejected.

In Milan in March 1971, Lonzi wrote a short manifesto called ‘On Woman’s Absence from Celebratory Manifestations of Male Creativity’ (‘Assenza della donna dai momenti celebrativi della manifestazione creativa maschile’), later published for the first time in her book of essays Let’s Spit on Hegel (Sputiamo su Hegel) in 1974. The manifesto, which was signed by Rivolta Femminile, confronts the traditional structures ascribed to art – that man is the creator and woman is the passive observer. Lonzi turns this on its head, arguing that being an observer has power, so therefore the role assigned to women can also have the power to legitimize male creativity.

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We at Rivolta Femminile refuse to take part in the celebratory manifestations of male creativity, having become aware that in a patriarchal world – a world made by men and for men – even creativity, which is a liberating experience, is actuated by men and for men. A woman, as a subsidiary human being, is denied all interventions that might imply being acknowledged as a subject: there is no provision for her liberation.

Man’s creativity has, as a counterpoint, another man’s creativity; it is a woman, however, who is kept as client and spectator of this activity, as her status excludes competition. The woman is confined to a category that guarantees a priori the appreciation of the values embodied in the creativity of the male protagonist. While creativity is acknowledged as having a liberating function, Art is institutionalized, as is woman (the neutral counterpart), who merely witnesses the gesturing of others. In Art, like in all activities, man is divided between competition with a partner, also a man, and the veneration he demands from a woman.

This is the nature of patriarchal creativity, stimulated by the aggressiveness with a rival and the helpless acquiescence of woman. Man, and therefore the artist, feels abandoned by woman the moment she relinquishes her archetypal spectatorial role: their solidarity was built on the belief that woman had arrived at the reincarnational apex granted to her species when she became a spectator gratified by creativity.

Woman discovers, however, that the patriarchal world has an absolute need for her: she is the element which allows the man’s efforts at liberation to be reached. Women’s liberation can only take place independently from patriarchal expectations and the dynamics of male liberation. The male artist expects the woman to mythicize his stance, and woman, until she begins her own process of liberation, fulfils precisely this need. Artistic creation does not want to lose the security of a myth that is supported by our exclusively receptive role.

By becoming aware of her condition in relation to male creativity, woman discovers that she has two possibilities. One, used until now, consists of reaching parity in the creative field historically defined by the male. This is alienating, and granted indulgently to her by the male. The other, which has been sought by the Feminist Movement, is the autonomous liberation of the woman, who then recuperates her own creativity, fed on the repressive examples imposed by the dominant sex.

To participate in the celebration of man’s creativity means to give in to the historical allure of our own colonization at this climactic point of patriarchal world strategy. Without woman the cult of male supremacy becomes a personality clash between men.

By being absent from the celebratory manifestations of male creativity, we do not pass an ideological judgement on it, nor do we contest it; but by refusing to accept it, we put a strain on the male concept of Art as a beneficial and administrable grace. By ceasing to believe in this reflexive liberation, creativity is free to escape patriarchal relationships. By her absence, woman shows her new consciousness, liberation and creativity.

Milan, March 1971

Rivolta Femminile