Violence and resistance: Joyce Lussu’s minority revolution in trans-lation

Abstract

This article explores the theme of violence in the autobiographical work of Joyce Salvadori Lussu, an Italian partisan, political activist, writer and translator, who experienced many wars and violent conflicts throughout her life: the Great War; the Second World War; the anti-imperialistic struggles; and the protests of 1968. As a premise, the author will reconsider the philosophical notions of violence and force in relation to the concept of resistance, by first situating all these categories within a physical sphere. Second, the author proposes a rethinking of the subject of violence from a female perspective, by studying Joyce Lussu’s theoretical discourse about women and war. Therefore, through the analysis of images of violence gathered from Lussu’s literary work, the author interprets the essential role of women as ‘resistants’ as well as bearers of pacifist values. Finally, the author uses the category of minority revolution, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, to underline Lussu’s political commitment on the side of renegades through her activity as a translator of minor literature. The methodological perspective adopted aims at challenging the contemporary domination of the anti-humanist discourse, by endorsing the secular values of Humanism, reemerged and theorized in Italy between the 1930s and 1960s.

Keywords:

• Joyce Lussu
• Italian antifascism
• resistance
• humanism
• minority revolution
• translation

Notes

1. See Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com

2. Ibid.

3. Arendt, On Violence, 4. Arendt refers to Engel, Herrn Eugen Dührings Umwälzung der Wissenschaft (1878), part II, ch. 3.

4. Benjamin, Critique of Violence, 277.

5. Arendt, On Violence, 4.

6. Weil, “The Iliad, or The Poem of Force,” 5.

7. Woolf, Three Guineas, 14–15.

8. Connell, Francisco Goya, 175.

9. Weil, “The Iliad, or The Poem of Force,” 13.

10. For Humanism. Explorations in Theory and Politics.

11. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, 3.

12. Ibid., 5.

13. Cook, Women and War: A Historical Encyclopedia from Antiquity to the Present.

14. Ibid., xxxi–xxxiii.

15. Lussu, L’uomo che voleva nascere donna, 25.

16. See Lussu, Le inglesi in Italia. Una saga anglo-franco-marchigiana.

17. See Robinson, “Return from Exile: Joyce Lussu’s Many Autobiographical Voices.”

18. Lussu, L’uomo che voleva nascere donna, 23.

19. Lussu, Padre padrone padreterno, 13.

20. Lussu, L’uomo che voleva nascere donna, 96–7.

21. Ibid., 32.

22. Lussu, Padre padrone padreterno, 31.

23. Ibid., 30.

24. Cohn, Women and Wars, 1. See also Matthews, Jenny. Women and War.

25. Ibid., 101–23.

26. Lussu, L’uomo che voleva nascere donna, 28.

27. Ibid., 43. Original text: “col viso insanguinato, reso informe dai colpi di pugnale e di bastone.”

28. Emma Thomas was an English educator who, after the Second World War, would work together with Aldo Capitini in Perugia within the Italian Non-Violent Movement.

29. Lussu, L’uomo che voleva nascere donna, 52.

30. Lussu, Portrait, 60–1.

31. Huizinga, Homo ludens, Foreword. In the chapter entitled Play and War, Huizinga affirms that «fighting, as a cultural function, always presupposes limiting rules, and it requires, to a certain extent anyway, the recognition of its play-quality. We can only speak of war as a cultural function so long as it is waged within a sphere whose members regard each other as equals or antagonists with equal rights; in other words its cultural function depends on its play-quality» (89).

32. Foucault, “Truth is in the Future.”

33. Lussu, Portrait, 81.

34. Regarding the role of women in the anti-fascist party Giustizia e libertà cf. Richet, Marion Rosselli, la fuga da Lipari e lo sviluppo dei circuiti antifascisti in Gran Bretagna, in I fratelli Rosselli. L’antifascismo e l’esilio, 74–78.

35. Dino Gentili was a partisan who founded the publishing house Edizioni U (U stands for ‘uomo’; that is, ‘man’) to continue his cultural resistance during the Reconstruction period. He wanted to spread the ideals of the anti-fascist group Giustizia e libertà as well as narratives about the resistance movement.

36. Lussu, Fronti e frontiere, 101.

37. This album collects more than 180 excruciating photographs of warfare violence, and it was conceived as a sort of shock therapy against war.

38. Lussu, L’uomo che voleva nascere donna, 76.

39. Lussu, Tradurre poesia, 8.

40. Lussu translated: Hikmet, La conga con Fidel (1961); Hikmet, In quest’anno 1941 (1961); Hikmet, Poesie d’amore (1963); Hikmet, Paesaggi umani (1965).

41. See Canti esquimesi (1963); Neto, Con occhi asciutti (1963); Craveirinha, Cantico a un dio di catrame (1966); OʼNeill, Portogallo, mio rimorso (1966); Ho-Chi-Minh, Diario dal carcere (1967); L’idea degli antenati: poesia del black power (1968); Storia dell’Angola (1968); La poesia degli albanesi (1977).

42. Tarrona, The Subversive Power of Joyce Lussu’s Activist Translation(s). Annarita Taronna has recently studied ‘Lussu’s unconventional politics of translation and her unconventional feminist views framed around the notion of intersectionality – that is, the interrelationship of gender, class, race, nationality etc.’.

43. Ibid.

44. Tarrona, “The Subversive Power of Joyce Lussu’s Activist Translation(s).”

45. Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka. Toward a Minor Literature, 16–18.

46. Lussu, Tradurre poesia, 5.

47. In this sense, Paul Celan is perhaps the most representative poet. As a matter of fact, he used German, the language of his mother, which is also the language of the torturers, to write his poetical work.

48. About the concept of ‘matria’ (Motherland), see, for instance: Giampiero Comolli, “Patria e matria;” González y González, Pueblo en vilo: microhistoria de San José de Gracia.

49. See, for example: Maurizio Viroli, Per amore della patria. Patriottismo e nazionalismo nella storia.

50. About the concept of ‘otherness’ see Said, Orientalism.

51. Lussu in the foreword to Craveirinha, Cantico a un dio di catrame, 15.

52. Knopfli, translated by Lussu. Ibid., 17.

53. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 27.

54. Lussu, Tradurre poesia, 5.

55. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 28.

56. In a recent collection of essays entitled For Humanism, some scholars challenge the “antihumanist thinking that has swept the academy since 1960s,” by recovering that international current called Socialist humanism, which flourished between the 1940s and 1960s and was “based on the views that humans require social cooperation and support, are capable of collective effort and individual creativity, and are most likely to thrive in egalitarian communities dedicated to the common wealth rather than to the pursuit of private profit”.

57. I refer in particular to scholars such as Carlo and Nello Rosselli, Ernesto Rossi and Joyce’s husband, Emilio Lussu. See: Giacone and Vial, I fratelli Rosselli: l'antifascismo e l’esilio; Bauerkämper and Rossolinski, Fascism without Borders