Affirmative Biopolitics: Life, Love, and Politics in Lea Melandri

Abstract

In this essay, I explore some crucial themes such as life, embodied experiences, the narrative self, the thinking body, all of which characterize the position of the Italian feminist writer, thinker, and activist Lea Melandri, as they emerge in her recently translated volume, Love and Violence. I also address her conviction of the hidden connection between love and violence, according to which men turn aggressive against the one who has first given them life, love, care, and sexual inspiration. The current “feminization” of the public space, which seems to soften the “war between the two sexes,” is, for Melandri, an updated version of the centuries–long domination that has understood women in terms of biological life, domestic virtues, and sexual servitude. How does this “feminization” reflect on how life unfolds, and what possibilities does this entail for the creation of a different politics, named by Melandri “affirmative biopolitics” and centered on the thinking body?