PUBLICATIONS
If you are curious about my work and research, you can find a list of selected publications, below. I added a bit of background stories to the official abstracts-that is to say, how, when, and why I decided to write that particular piece or book. Academic research always happens in conversation with other aspects of the author's life and with the (personal, social, cultural, spiritual) contexts that they inhabit, in a particular moment in time. I hope that this additional information can add textures to what I do and why I do it. I hope it helps re-imagining the role of the researcher and of academic research, in general.
I periodically update this page and provide free access links, when available :). If you have questions or comments, please feel free to contact me!
Book
Can the way a word is used give legitimacy to a political movement? Feminism, Violence, and Representation in Modern Italy traces the use of the word "femminicidio" (or "femicide") as a tool to mobilize Italian feminists, particularly the Union of Women in Italy (UDI). Based on nearly two years of fieldwork among feminist activists, Giovanna Parmigiani takes a broad look at the many ways in which violence inflects the lives of women in Italy. From unchallenged gendered grammar rules to the representation of women as victims, Parmigiani examines the devaluing of women's contribution to their communities through the words and experiences of the women she interviews. She describes the first uses of the word "femminicidio" as a political term used by and within feminist circles and traces its spread to ultimate legitimization and national relevance. The word redefined women as a political subject by building an imagined community of potentially violated women. In doing so, it challenged Italians to consider the status of women in Italian society, and to make this status a matter of public debate. It also problematized the connection between women and tropes of women as objects of suffering and victimhood. Parmigiani considers this exchange within the context of Italian Catholic heritage, a precarious economy, and long-held notions of honor and shame. Parmigiani provides a careful and searing consideration of the ways in which representations of violence and the politics of this representation are shaping the future of women in Italy and beyond.
This is my Ph.D. dissertation-become-book. When I started my Ph.D., I had planned to do research in Israel...but life happens, and just before my scheduled ethnographic leave, I found myself in need of a "plan B." My choice to do research in Salento, in the south eastern fringe of the Italian peninsula, a place that I had never visited and with whom I do not have any genetic link, was totally unexpected. It emerged as a sudden insight. It felt right, right from the start. Long before I embraced magic in my life, I recognized and followed my hunch and I replaced Israel with Salento. It was probably one the best choices of my life. There, between the Adriatic and the Ionian seas, I found a home, I found family, I found ( many versions of) myself. Some of these are included in this book.
peer-reviewed article
“Femminicidio and the Emergence of a ‘Community of Sense’ in Contemporary Italy”.
Modern Italy 23(1): 19–34, 2018.
In this article, I offer a reading of the ‘creation’ of femminicidio and of its role in the emergence of a new women’s question in Italy. I concentrate on three central steps in the legitimation of the word and the worlds femminicidio: Unione delle Donne Italiane (UDI)’s political use of the term in 2006, UDI’s Staffetta in 2008/2009, and the birth of the movement Se Non Ora Quando in 2011. By following Rancière’s understanding of politics as a ‘reconfiguration of the sensible’, I argue that the emergence of femminicidio fostered the emergence of a ‘community of sense’ of women as a new political subject. This community did not gather mainly around ideas of who a woman is or should be, nor did it arise from a common acknowledgement of the nature of ‘violence’. Rather, it was structured around shared feelings and affects, triggered by women’s sense of being actual or potential objects of violence. Keywords: femminicidio; senses; political activism; Unione delle Donne Italiane/UDI; Italian feminism; affects.
In my experience as an ethnographer, I seldom, initially, actively look for specific topics of research. Yes, I have a general idea of what I would like to study, but, in most cases, research topics "come to me," during my fieldwork. And the process, I would say, is quite organic. When I started to work with Italian feminists, for example, I was interested in the ways they reacted to former Italian prime minister Berlusconi's sexual scandals and, in particular, in the shared feeling of indignation. Eventually, by hanging out with my interlocutors, I found that "indignation" brought me to the topic of femicide. In this article I want to stress the importance of emotion and affects in political activism, and I am doing so in conversation with a French philosopher whose work I really like and whose name many have never heard of: Jacques Ranciėre.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE
“Spiritual Pizzica. A Southern Italian Perspective on Contemporary Paganism.”
The Pomegranate, the International Journal of Pagan Studies 21(1): 53-7, 2019
In this article, the result of an ongoing ethnographic fieldwork amonga contemporary Pagan group in the Salento area of Italy, I research the peculiar expression of contemporary Pagan spiritualities centered on the interpretation of a “traditional” local dance called pizzica. I focus on the specific way of understanding and living time and temporality among this group that happens through the performance of this dance. In particular, by presenting the particular historicity—i.e. the way in which time and temporality are understood and experienced—of the Salentine group I studied that I refer to as “expanded present” or “presence,” I argue for a re-articulation of the relationships between contemporary Paganism and “history,” “tradition,” and the “reconstructionist/eclectic” spectrum in understanding contemporary Paganisms.
This is a "preparatory article" for my forthcoming book. A sort of "teaser" of Spider Dance. It is also the place where I "tested," so to speak, my main argument. I always tell my students that I am a "slow ethnographer," that I need at least six months of fieldwork to ask the right questions and at least a year a half to be able to write something that I consider meaningful :). This, I know, places me on the slowest end of the ethnographic spectrum. I cherish slow ethnography a lot, though. It is not only, for me, the best way to do research, but the most ethical one. In any case, If I had stayed in Salento for a shorter period, in this particular occasion, I would not have been able to notice, first, and understand, later, the importance of historicities ( i.e., the ways in which people experience and understand time and temporality) in the study of magic. In this article, in fact, I argue in favor of the importance of a non-linear historicity that I call "expanded present" for the Pagans and New Agers I met in Salento.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE
Italian Culture 38(2):172-190, 2020
In this article, I narrate the story of Anfora, a personified art object considered a “witness” of gendered violence and femicide, in a political campaign organized by the feminist group Unione Donne in Italia (UDI) in 2008 and 2009. I argue that this campaign’s use of “prosopopoeia”contributed to the emergence of femicide (femminicidio) as a matter of concern in Italy, to the construction of a “community of sense” around gendered violence, and to a redefinition of women as political subjects. By focusing on the representational, relational, and affective dimensions of Anfora’s personification, I show how the feminists of UDI promoted an understanding of violence beyond trauma and of witnessing beyond victimhood.
Both of these understandings speak to broader debates in contemporary feminism. Anfora’s role was more than symbolic, in that her material presence was a form of witness. In this way, I claim, Anfora became a key element in the emergence of a new “woman question” in Italy related to gendered violence and femicide: a political enterprise pursued through what Jacques Rancière would call dissensus. KEYWORDS: Italy, violence against women, representation, femicide, objects
One of the elements that caught my attention, during my ethnography with Italian feminists, was the way they talked about, related to, and understood their relationship with Anfora-- an object, and the protagonist of a National campaign against femicide promoted by UDI ( Union of Women in Italy). While this aspect of my research ended up not being included in the book, I wanted to write about it. As it often happens to me, I write to try to better understand something that I find intriguing, unclear, or urgent. I see this article, retrospectively, as an initial step in the journey of my engagement with more-than-human and other-than-human beings. I did not know, at the time, that I would end up studying magic. Nonetheless, I sensed the striking qualities of Anfora and started to understand how important, widespread, and politically relevant are non (mainstream)-Modern ways to interact and understand our relationships with non-human beings.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE
Magic and Politics: Conspirituality and Covid-19
JAAR-Journal of the American Academy of Religion 10.1093/jaarel/lfab053, 2021
Why do people find conspiracy theories attractive, convincing, or useful? In this article, I analyze conspirituality—that is, the relationships between New Age spirituality and conspiracy theories—in Italy during the COVID-19 lockdown. After distinguishing between conspiracy-believing and belief in conspiracies, I claim that conspiracy-believing could be understood
as an aesthetic (sensory and artistic) practice. In doing so, I offer a novel interpretation on conspiracism that complements current scholarship while departing from the latter’s focus on the cognitive and emotional weaknesses of those who adopt conspiracy theories. By engaging with the thought of Jacques Rancière, in conversation with studies on contemporary Paganism and Western esotericism, I consider the adoption of conspiracy theories as an expression of dissensus by a communityof sense that does not look only for visibility but, rather, wants to be fully acknowledged, recognized, and legitimized in their “participatory”—or “magical”—way of inhabiting the world.
It was 2020, Covid was raging, I was in the U.S. Since I regularly keep in touch with my interlocutors and friends, when I am not in Italy, I started to notice that some of the people I have been working with for many years appeared to be into conspiracy theories. This surprised me and, once again, this article is the result of my attempt to understand what was happening. In this (well quoted) article, I try to offer an interpretation of conspiracy theories and spirituality that challenges some mainstream assumptions. This topic and is still accompanying me, in my current research.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLE
“If You Dance Alone, You Cannot Be Healed”: Relational Ontologies and "Epistemes of Contagion" in Salento (Italy).
California Italian Studies 11(1), 2022
In this article I focus on neo-animist, relational ontologies that are active within and beyond contemporary Pagan communities in the Salento area of Italy. By addressing case-studies such as "spiritual neotarantismo," the querelle around the Xylella Fastidiosa epidemics that has been affecting olive trees, and NoTAP activism, I argue that many Salentinians today pursue health and well-being by embracing neo-animist attitudes that consider human and non-human persons alike as kin. By analyzing these neo-animist stances in conversation with the work of the philosopher Roberto Esposito, I will offer examples of ways of being in which "contact, relationality, and being in common" are not "liquidated" (Esposito, Welch, and Lemm 2021a), but fostered and put at the center of personal and collective practices of well-being and of political activism.
The more I engage with my current line of study, the more I get transformed by it. To me, this is only evidence that I am doing a good job- as a human and as a researcher. In the past 8 years I have been experimenting different types of relationality, with both humans and non-humans. The message of this article is very dear to me, since I firmly believe that knowledge, as well as healing, are not solo enterprises.